Recent climate change has driven divergent hydrological shifts in high-latitude peatlands
Hui Zhang, Minna Valiranta, Graeme T. Swindles, Marco Aquino-Lopez, Donal Mullan, Ning Tan, Matthew Amesbury, Kirill Babeshko, Kunshan Bao, Anatoly Bobrov, Viktor Chernyshov, Marissa A. Davies, Andrei-Cosmin Diaconu, Angelica Feurdean, Sarah A. Finkelstein, Michelle Garneau, Zhengtang Guo, Miriam C. Jones, Martin Kay, Eric S. Klein, Maruisz Lamentowicz, Gabriel Magnan, Katarzyna Marcisz, Natalia Mazei, Yuri Mazei, Richard Payne, Nicolas Pelletier, Sanna Piilo, Steve Pratte, Thomas P. Roland, Damir Saldaev, William Shotyk, Thomas G. Sim, Thomas J Sloan, Michal Slowinski, Julie Talbot, Liam Taylor, Andrey N. Tsyganov, Sebastian Wetterich, Wei Xing, Yan Zhao
2022, Nature Communications (13)
High-latitude peatlands are changing rapidly in response to climate change, including permafrost thaw. Here, we reconstruct hydrological conditions since the seventeenth century using testate amoeba data from 103 high-latitude peat archives. We show that 54% of the peatlands have been drying and 32% have been wetting...
Hydrologic conditions in Kansas, water year 2021
Kyle A. Puls
2022, Fact Sheet 2022-3071
The U.S. Geological Survey maintains a network of hydrologic monitoring stations across Kansas in cooperation with Federal, State, Tribal, and local agencies. During water year 2021, this network included 230 real-time surface water data collection sites, referred to as “streamgages.” A water year is the 12-month period from October 1...
Using machine learning to improve predictions and provide insight into fluvial sediment transport
J. William Lund, Joel T. Groten, Diana L. Karwan, Chad Babcock
2022, Hydrological Processes (36)
A thorough understanding of fluvial sediment transport is critical to addressing many environmental concerns such as exacerbated flooding, degradation of aquatic habitat, excess nutrients, and the economic challenges of restoring aquatic systems. Fluvial sediment samples are integral for addressing these environmental concerns but cannot be collected at every river and...
Temporal coherence patterns of prairie pothole wetlands indicate the importance of landscape linkages and wetland heterogeneity in maintaining biodiversity
Kyle McLean, David M. Mushet, Jon N. Sweetman
2022, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (10)
Wetland ecosystems are diverse, productive habitats that are essential reservoirs of biodiversity. Not only are they home to numerous wetland-specialist species, but they also provide food, water, and shelter that support terrestrial wildlife populations. However, like observed patterns of biodiversity loss, wetland habitats have experienced widespread loss and degradation. In...
New projections of 21st century climate and hydrology for Alaska and Hawaiʻi
Naoki Mizukami, Andrew J. Newman, Jeremy Littell, Thomas W. Giambelluca, Andrew W. Wood, Ethan D. Gutmann, Joseph J. Hamman, Diana R. Gergel, Bart Nijssen, Martyn . Clark, Jeffrey R. Arnold
2022, Climate Services (27)
In the United States, high-resolution, century-long, hydroclimate projection datasets have been developed for water resources planning, focusing on the contiguous United States (CONUS) domain. However, there are few statewide hydroclimate projection datasets available for Alaska and Hawaiʻi. The limited information on...
Soil carbon consequences of historic hydrologic impairment and recent restoration in coastal wetlands
Meagan J. Eagle, Kevin D. Kroeger, Amanda C. Spivak, Faming Wang, Jianwu Tang, Omar I. Abdul-Aziz, Khandker S. Ishtiaq, Jennifer A. O’Keefe Suttles, Adrian G. Mann
2022, Science of the Total Environment (848)
Coastal wetlands provide key ecosystem services, including substantial long-term storage of atmospheric CO2 in soil organic carbon pools. This accumulation of soil organic matter is a vital component of elevation gain in coastal wetlands responding to sea-level rise. Anthropogenic activities that alter coastal wetland function through disruption of tidal exchange...
Bedrock depth influences spatial patterns of summer baseflow, temperature and flow disconnection for mountainous headwater streams
Martin Briggs, Phillip J. Goodling, Zachary Johnson, Karli M. Rogers, Nathaniel P. Hitt, Jennifer H. Fair, Craig D. Snyder
2022, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (26) 3989-4011
In mountain headwater streams, the quality and resilience of summer cold-water habitat is generally regulated by stream discharge, longitudinal stream channel connectivity and groundwater exchange. These critical hydrologic processes are thought to be influenced by the stream corridor bedrock contact depth (sediment thickness), a parameter often inferred from sparse hillslope...
Modeled streamflow response to scenarios of Tundra Lake water withdrawal and seasonal climate extremes, Arctic Coastal Plain, Alaska
Anne Gädeke, Christopher Arp, Anna K. Liljedahl, Ronald P. Daanen, Lei Cai, Vladimir Alexeev, Benjamin Jones, Mark S. Wipfli, Jörg Schulla
2022, Water Resources Research (58)
On the Arctic Coastal Plain (ACP) in Northern Alaska (USA), permafrost and abundant surface-water storage define watershed hydrological processes, which are increasingly subject to changes both in climate and land-use. In the last decades, the ACP landscape experienced extreme climate events and increased lake water withdrawal (LWW) for construction of...
Evaluating hydrologic region assignment techniques for ungaged basins in Alaska, USA
Theodore B. Barnhart, William H. Farmer, John C. Hammond, Graham A. Sexstone, Janet H. Curran, Joshua C. Koch, Jessica M. Driscoll
2022, River Research and Applications (38) 1569-1584
Building continental-scale hydrologic models in data-sparse regions requires an understanding of spatial variation in hydrologic processes. Extending these models to ungaged locations requires techniques to group ungaged locations with gaged ones to make process importance and model parameter transfer decisions to ungaged locations. This analysis (1) tested...
Hydrological and lock operation conditions associated with paddlefish and bigheaded carp dam passage on a large and small scale in the Upper Mississippi River (Pools 14–18)
Dominique D. Turney, Andrea K. Fritts, Brent C. Knights, Jonathan M. Vallazza, Douglas Appel, James T. Lamar
2022, PeerJ (10)
Movement and dispersal of migratory fish species is an important life-history characteristics that can be impeded by navigation dams. Although habitat fragmentation may be detrimental to native fish species, it might act as an effective and economical barrier for controlling the spread of invasive species in riverine systems. Various technologies...
Floodplains and climate change
Annika Keeley, Shruti Khanna, Nicole Kwan, Bryan G. Matthias, Catarina Pien, Marissa L. Wulff
Samuel M. Bashevkin, Larry R. Brown, Eva Bush, Gonzalo Castillo, Denise Colombano, Rosemary Hartman, Bruce Herbold, Shruti Khanna, Annika Keeley, Nicole Kwan, Peggy W. Lehman, Brian Mahardja, Timothy D. Malinich, Ryan McKenzie, Bryan G. Matthias, Catarina Pien, Marissa L. Wulff, editor(s)
2022, IEP Technical Report 99-4
Floodplains are landscape features that are periodically inundated by water from adjacent rivers (Opperman et al. 2010). Ecologically, functional floodplains are characterized by three primary elements: connectivity, flow regime, and spatial scale. Water quantity flowing over floodplains can vary greatly. Based on a flood’s effects on the floodplain, three flood...
Influence of surface- and ground-water hydrology on riparian tree growth and mortality in the Limitrophe segment of the Colorado River
Patrick B. Shafroth
2022, Report, Minute 323, first biennial report 2018, of monitoring of environmental flows in the Limitrophe and delta of the Colorado River
Branch sections and cores of cottonwood and willow trees were collected from two sites in the Limitrophe. Tree-ring analyses may reveal the relationships among tree growth, streamflow and groundwater....
Section 5: Remote sensing of vegetation in the riparian corridor of the Colorado River’s delta 2013-2018
Pamela L. Nagler, Armando Barreto-Munoz, Christopher J. Jarchow, Kamel Didan
2022, Report, Minute 323: Colorado River limitrophe and delta environmental flows monitoring interim report for 2018
This remote sensing section is based on Nagler et al. (in preparation for the journal Hydrological Processes) and is a summary of the USGS preliminary findings to date. This report documents the changes in green foliage density (greenness) as measured by satellite vegetation index (VI) data and corresponding evapotranspiration (ET)...
Editorial: Fire regimes in desert ecosystems: Drivers, impacts and changes
Eddie J. B. van Etten, Matthew L. Brooks, Aaron C. Greenville, Glenda M. Wardel
2022, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (10)
Although not commonly associated with fire, many desert ecosystems across the globe do occasionally burn, and there is evidence that fire incidences are increasing, leading to altered fire regimes in this biome. The increased prevalence of megafires (wildfires >10,000 ha in size and typically damaging) in most global biomes is...
Mapping structural control through analysis of land-surface deformation for the Rialto-Colton groundwater subbasin, San Bernardino County, California, 1992–2010
Justin T. Brandt
2022, Open-File Report 2022-1030
The locations of many faults in and near the Rialto-Colton groundwater subbasin are not precisely known because the spatial density of existing lithologic and hydrologic data used to infer the locations of faults can be sparse. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District,...
Trends in groundwater levels, and orthophosphate and nitrate concentrations in the Middle Snake River Region, south-central Idaho
Kenneth D. Skinner
2022, Scientific Investigations Report 2022-5060
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) evaluated nitrate and orthophosphate concentrations in groundwater for temporal trends (monotonic and step trends) for the middle Snake River region (Cassia, Gooding, Jerome, Lincoln, Minidoka, and Twin Falls Counties) in south-central Idaho using the Regional Kendall test (monotonic trends) and the Wilcoxon signed rank...
Update and recalibration of the Rio Grande Transboundary Integrated Hydrologic Model, New Mexico and Texas, United States, and northern Chihuahua, Mexico
Andre B. Ritchie, Amy E. Galanter, Allison K. Flickinger, Zachary M. Shephard, Ian M. Ferguson
2022, Scientific Investigations Report 2022-5045
The Rio Grande Transboundary Integrated Hydrologic Model (RGTIHM) was developed through an interagency effort between the U.S. Geological Survey and the Bureau of Reclamation to provide a tool for analyzing the hydrologic system response to the historical evolution of water use and potential changes in water supplies and demands in...
Relocated beaver can increase water storage and decrease stream temperature in headwater streams
Benjamin J. Dittbrenner, Jason W. Schilling, Christian E. Torgersen, Joshua J. Lawler
2022, Ecosphere (13)
Many areas are experiencing increasing stream temperatures due to climate change, and some are experiencing reduced summer stream flows and water availability. Because dam building and pond formation by beaver can increase water storage, stream cooling, and riparian ecosystem resilience, beaver have been proposed as a potential climate adaption tool....
Assessing spatial transferability of a random forest metamodel for predicting drainage fraction
Elisa Bjerre, Michael N. Fienen, Raphael Schneider, Julian Koch, Anker L. Højberg
2022, Journal of Hydrology (612)
Fully distributed hydrological models are widely used in groundwater management, but model speed and data requirements impede their use for decision support purposes. Metamodels provide a simpler and faster model which emulates the underlying complex model using machine learning techniques. However, metamodel predictions beyond the...
Large-scale distribution models for optimal prediction of Eastern black rail habitat within tidal ecosystems
Bryan S. Stevens, Courtney J. Conway, Kirsten Luke, Aimee Weldon, Christy Hand, Amy Schwarzer, Fletcher Smith, Craig Watson, Bryan D. Watts
2022, Global Ecology and Conservation (38)
Eastern black rails (Laterallus jamaicensis jamaicensis) are among the rarest and least-studied birds in North America and were recently listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Spatial models that predict habitat quality across the subspecies range are therefore needed to inform conservation, recovery, and monitoring efforts for this rare bird. We...
Trout responses to stocking rates and river discharge within a southeast U.S. hydropeaking tailwater
Jonathan J. Spurgeon, Joseph Kaiser, Christy Graham, Steve Lochmann
2022, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (42) 926-938
Freshwater fish populations often exist in systems characterized by novel ecological processes resulting from human alteration. Salmonid populations embedded within coldwater sections of warmwater rivers are spatially constrained by habitat availability. Tailwater fish contend with fluctuating river discharges and density-dependent processes associated with fish stocking and exploitation. Salmonid populations sustained...
A Central Asia hydrologic monitoring dataset for food and water security applications in Afghanistan
Amy McNally, Jossy Jacob, Kristi Arsenault, Kimberly Slinski, Daniel Sarmiento, Andrew Hoell, Shahriar Pervez, James Rowland, Michael Budde, Sujay Kumar, Christa Peters-Lidard, James Verdin
2022, Earth System Science Data (14) 3115-3135
From the Hindu Kush mountains to the Registan Desert, Afghanistan is a diverse landscape where droughts, floods, conflict, and economic market accessibility pose challenges for agricultural livelihoods and food security. The ability to remotely monitor environmental conditions is critical to support decision making for humanitarian assistance. The Famine Early Warning...
Geomorphic survey of North Fork Eagle Creek, New Mexico, 2019
Alexander P. Graziano, Shaleene B. Chavarria
2022, Open-File Report 2022-1041
The 2012 Little Bear Fire resulted in substantial loss of vegetation in the Eagle Creek Basin, south-central New Mexico, which has been expected to cause a variety of hydrologic responses that could influence geomorphic change to North Fork Eagle Creek. To monitor geomorphic change, surveys of a downstream study reach...
Loss of street trees predicted to cause 6000 L/tree increase in leaf-on stormwater runoff for Great Lakes urban sewershed
Robert C. Coville, James Kruegler, William R. Selbig, Satoshi Hirabayashi, Stephen Loheid, William Avery, William Shuster, Ralph J. Haefner, Bryant C. Scharenbroch, Theodore A. Endreny, Dave Nowak
2022, Urban Forestry & Urban Greening (74)
Urban forests are recognized as a nature-based solution for stormwater management. This study assessed the underlying processes and extent of runoff reduction due to street trees with a paired-catchment experiment conducted in two sewersheds of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Computer models are flexible, fast, and low-cost options to generalize and...
U.S. Geological Survey response to Hurricane Maria flooding in Puerto Rico and characterization of peak streamflows observed September 20–22, 2017
Julieta M. Gómez-Fragoso, Mark Smith, Marilyn Santiago
2022, Scientific Investigations Report 2022-5040
Hurricane Maria struck the island of Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017, as a Category 4 storm. The hurricane traversed the island from southeast to northwest and produced recorded 48-hour rainfall totals of up to 30.01 inches. Estimates of the human death toll range from 2,975 to 4,645, possibly more.The...
