Streamflow contributions from tribal lands to major river basins of the United States
Kyle W. Blasch, Stephen A. Hundt, Patrick Wurster, Roy Sando, Antony Berthelote
2018, PLoS ONE (13) 1-16
While many studies on tribal water resources of individual tribal lands in the United States (US) have been conducted, the importance of tribal water resources at a national scale has largely gone unrecognized because their combined totals have not been quantified. Thus, we sought to provide a numerical estimate of...
Collision and displacement vulnerability to offshore wind energy infrastructure among marine birds of the Pacific Outer Continental Shelf
Emily C. Kelsey, Jonathan J. Felis, Max Czapanskiy, David M. Peresksta, Josh Adams
2018, Journal of Environmental Management (227) 229-247
Marine birds are vulnerable to collision with and displacement by offshore wind energy infrastructure (OWEI). Here we present the first assessment of marine bird vulnerability to potential OWEI in the California Current System portion of the U.S. Pacific Outer Continental Shelf (POCS). Using population size, demography, life history, flight heights, and avoidance...
Monitoring the social benefits of ecological restoration
David M. Martin, James E. Lyons
2018, Restoration Ecology (26) 1045-1050
Ecological restoration has traditionally been evaluated by monitoring the recovery of ecosystem conditions, such as species diversity and abundance, physical form, and water quality, whereas monitoring the social benefits of restoration is uncommon. Current monitoring frameworks do not track who benefits from restoration or by how much. In this study,...
Changes in Earth’s gravity reveal changes in groundwater storage
Jeffrey R. Kennedy
2018, Fact Sheet 2018-3032
Changes in the amount of water stored in underground aquifers cause small changes in Earth’s gravitational field. The U.S. Geological Survey’s Southwest Gravity Program has developed methods for measuring terrestrial gravity changes with part-per-billion precision. The measurements allow scientists to map changes in groundwater storage and to improve models...
Necropsy-based wild fish health assessment
Vicki S. Blazer, Heather L. Walsh, Ryan P. Braham, Cheyenne R. Smith
2018, Journal of Visualized Experiments (139)
Anthropogenic influences from increased nutrients and chemical contaminants, to habitat alterations and climate change, can have significant effects on fish populations. Adverse effects monitoring, utilizing biomarkers from the organismal to the molecular level, can be used to assess the cumulative effects on fishes and other organisms. Fish health has been...
Methods used to reconstruct historical daily streamflows in northern New Jersey and southeastern New York, water years 1922–2010
R. Edward Hickman, Amy R. McHugh
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5068
A study was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, to reconstruct streamflows for use in the RiverWare model. Methods and data used to estimate daily reconstructed streamflows at 53 sites in selected subbasins in northern New Jersey and southeastern New...
A comparison of the chemical sensitivities between in vitro and in vivo propagated juvenile freshwater mussels: Implications for standard toxicity testing
A. Popp, W. G. Cope, M.A. McGregor, Thomas J. Kwak, T. Augspurger, Jay F. Levine, L. Koch
2018, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (37) 3077-3085
Unionid mussels are ecologically important and are globally imperiled. Toxicants contribute to mussel declines, and toxicity tests using juvenile mussels—a sensitive life stage—are valuable in determining thresholds used to set water quality criteria. In vitro culture methods provide an efficient way to propagate juveniles for toxicity testing, but their relative...
Reductions in tree performance during hotter droughts are mitigated by shifts in nitrogen cycling
Charlotte Grossiord, Arthur Gessler, Sasha C. Reed, Isaac Borrego, Adam D. Collins, Lee T. Dickman, Max Ryan, Leonie Schonbeck, Sanna Sevanto, Alberto Vilagroso, Nate G. McDowell
2018, Plant, Cell & Environment (41) 2627-2637
Climate warming should result in hotter droughts of unprecedented severity in this century. Such droughts have been linked with massive tree mortality, and data suggest that warming interacts with drought to aggravate plant performance. Yet how forests will respond to hotter droughts remains unclear, as does the suite of mechanisms...
Biocrusts enhance soil fertility and Bromus tectorum growth, and interact with warming to influence germination
Scott Ferrenberg, Akasha M. Faist, Armin J. Howell, Sasha C. Reed
2018, Plant and Soil (429) 77-90
Background and aimsBiocrusts are communities of cyanobacteria, mosses, and/or lichens found in drylands worldwide. Biocrusts are proposed to enhance soil fertility and productivity, but simultaneously act as a barrier to the invasive grass, Bromus tectorum, in western North America. Both biocrusts and B. tectorum are sensitive to climate change drivers,...
Long-term evolution of sand transport through a river network: Relative influences of a dam versus natural changes in grain size from sand waves
David J. Topping, Erich R. Mueller, John C. Schmidt, Ronald E. Griffiths, David J. Dean, Paul E. Grams
2018, Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface (123) 1879-1909
Temporal and spatial nonuniformity in supplies of water and sand in a river network leads to sand transport that is in local disequilibrium with the upstream sand supply. In such river networks, sand is transported downstream as elongating waves in which coupled changes in grain size and transport occur. Depending...
Multi-year data from satellite- and ground-based sensors show details and scale matter in assessing climate’s effects on wetland surface water, amphibians, and landscape conditions
Walter Sadinski, Alisa L. Gallant, Mark Roth, Jesslyn F. Brown, Gabriel B. Senay, Wayne L. Brininger, Perry M. Jones, Jason M. Stoker
2018, PLoS ONE (13)
Long-term, interdisciplinary studies of relations between climate and ecological conditions on wetland-upland landscapes have been lacking, especially studies integrated across scales meaningful for adaptive resource management. We collected data in situ at individual wetlands, and via satellite for surrounding 4-km2 landscape blocks, to assess relations between annual weather dynamics, snow duration, phenology, wetland...
Impacts of tidal road-stream crossings on aquatic organism passage
Sarah Becker, Scott Jackson, Adrian Jordaan, Allison H. Roy
2018, Cooperator Science Series 131-2018
ivers and streams are highly vulnerable to fragmentation from roads due to their prevalence in the landscape. Road-stream crossings are far more numerous than other anthropogenic barriers such as dams; these crossing structures (culverts, bridges, fords, and tide gates) have been demonstrated to impede the passage of aquatic organisms. However,...
Patterns of host-associated fecal indicators driven by hydrology, precipitation, and land use attributes in Great Lakes watersheds
Deborah K. Dila, Steven R. Corsi, Peter L. Lenaker, Austin K. Baldwin, Melinda J. Bootsma, Sandra L. McLellan
2018, Environmental Science & Technology (52) 11500-11509
Fecal contamination from sewage and agricultural runoff is a pervasive problem in Great Lakes watersheds. Most work examining fecal pollution loads relies on discrete samples of fecal indicators and modeling land use. In this study, we made empirical measurements of human and ruminant-associated fecal indicator bacteria and combined these with...
Tidal flushing of mercury from the Bremerton Naval Complex through the PSNS015 stormwater drain system to Sinclair Inlet, Kitsap County, Washington, 2011 -12
Kathleen E. Conn, Anthony J. Paulson, Richard S. Dinicola, John F. DeWild
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5087
The sediments of Sinclair Inlet, in Puget Sound, Washington, have elevated levels of contaminants including mercury. The Bremerton Naval Complex is adjacent to Sinclair Inlet, and has known areas of historical soil mercury contamination. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the U.S. Navy, has been investigating the potential for...
The 2015 landslide and tsunami in Taan Fiord, Alaska
Brentwood Higman, Dan H. Shugar, Colin P. Stark, Goran Ekstrom, Michele N Koppes, Patrick Lynett, Anja Dufresne, Peter J. Haeussler, Marten Geertsema, Sean P.S. Gulick, Andrew Mattox, Jeremy G. Venditti, Maureen A. L. Walton, Naoma McCall, Erin Mckittrick, Breanyn MacInnes, Eric L. Bilderback, Hui Tang, Micheal Willis, Bruce Richmond, Bobby Reece, Christopher F. Larsen, Bjorn Olson, James Capra, Aykut Ayca, Colin K Bloom, Haley Williams, Doug Bonno, Robert Weiss, Adam Keen, Vassilios Skanavis, Micheal Loso
2018, Scientific Reports (8)
Glacial retreat in recent decades has exposed unstable slopes and allowed deep water to extend beneath some of those slopes. Slope failure at the terminus of Tyndall Glacier on 17 October 2015 sent 180 million tons of rock into Taan Fiord, Alaska. The resulting tsunami reached elevations as high as...
Leveraging big data towards functionally-based, catchment scale restoration prioritization
John P. Lovette, Jonathan M. Duncan, Lindsey S. Smart, John P. Fay, Dean L. Urban, Nancy Daly, Jamie Blackwell, Anne B. Hoos, Ana M. Garcia, Lawrence E. Band
2018, Environmental Management (62) 1007-1024
The persistence of freshwater degradation has necessitated the growth of an expansive stream and wetland restoration industry, yet restoration prioritization at broad spatial extents is still limited and ad-hoc restoration prevails. The River Basin Restoration Prioritization tool has been developed to incorporate vetted, distributed data models into a catchment scale...
Monitoring responses to variation in food supply for a migratory waterfowl: American Black Duck (Anas rubripes) in winter
Perry S. Barboza, Dennis G. Jorde
2018, Journal of Comparative Physiology B: Biochemical, Systemic, and Environmental Physiology (188) 831-842
Wintering Black Ducks (Anas rubripes) concentrate in wetlands along the Atlantic coast where natural and anthropogenic disturbances have increased over the last 50 years, a period in which the population of Black Ducks has declined. We studied the sensitivity of Black Ducks to perturbations in food supply that...
Social–ecological landscape patterns predict woody encroachment from native tree plantings in a temperate grassland
V.M. Donvan, J.L. Burnett, C.H. Bielski, H.E. Birge, R. Bevans, D. Twidwell, Craig R. Allen
2018, Ecology and Evolution (8) 9624-9632
Afforestation is often viewed as the purposeful planting of trees in historically nonforested grasslands, but an unintended consequence is woody encroachment, which should be considered part of the afforestation process. In North America's temperate grassland biome, Eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana L.) is a native species used in tree plantings that aggressively...
High-water marks from Hurricane Sandy for coastal areas of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, October 2012
Lance J. Ostiguy, Timothy C. Sargent, Brittney Izbicki, Gardner C. Bent
2018, Data Series 1094
Because coastal areas in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts were heavily affected by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), under a mission agreement with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, collected storm tide high-water marks in those coastal areas. This effort was undertaken to better understand the...
Documentation of single-well aquifer tests and integrated borehole analyses, Pahute Mesa and Vicinity, Nevada
Rebecca J. Frus, Keith J. Halford
2018, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5096
Single-well aquifer testing has been carried out at Pahute Mesa in southern Nevada since 1962. These tests include single-well pumping and slug tests to estimate geologic formation hydraulic properties. Initially, aquifer tests focused on identifying low-permeability rocks suitable for testing large-yield nuclear devices, whereas later hydrologic investigations focused on potential...
Similarity assessment of linear hydrographic features using high performance computing
Larry V. Stanislawski, Jeffrey Wendel, Ethan J. Shavers, Ting Li
2018, Conference Paper
This work discusses a current open source implementation of a line similarity assessment workflow to compare elevation-derived drainage lines with the high-resolution National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) surface-water flow network. The process identifies matching and mismatching lines in each dataset to help focus subsequent validation procedures to areas of the NHD...
Conflicting messages about camping near waterbodies in wilderness: A review of the scientific basis and need for flexibility
Jeffrey L. Marion, Jeremy Wimpey, Ben Lawhorn
2018, International Journal of Wilderness (24)
The preceding article by C. B. Griffin examines the differences in recommended camping distance from waterbodies from a perspective that there should be consistency between the guidance provided by land management agencies and low impact education and communication programs, such as Leave No Trace and Tread Lightly. We concur that regulatory...
When oil and water mix: Understanding the environmental impacts of shale development
Daniel J. Soeder, Douglas B. Kent
2018, GSA Today (28) 4-10
Development of shale gas and tight oil, or unconventional oil and gas (UOG), has dramatically increased domestic energy production in the U.S. UOG resources are typically developed through the use of hydraulic fracturing, which creates high-permeability flow paths into large volumes of tight rocks to provide a means for hydrocarbons...
Exploring the impacts of seagrass on coupled marsh-tidal flat morphodynamics
Joel A. Carr, Giulio Mariotti, Sergio Fahgerazzi, Karen McGlathery, Patricia Wiberg
2018, Frontiers in Environmental Science (6) 1-16
Intertidal coastal environments are prone to changes induced by sea level rise, increases in storminess, temperature, and anthropogenic disturbances. It is unclear how changes in external drivers may affect the dynamics of low energy coastal environments because their response is non-linear, and characterized by many thresholds and discontinuities. As such,...
Interstate water management of a “hidden” resource - Physical principles of groundwater hydrology
Paul M. Barlow
2018, Conference Paper
Groundwater systems are dynamic geologic environments in which water continuously flows from recharge areas to discharge areas at streams, springs, wetlands, coastal waters, and wells. Natural, predevelopment conditions within groundwater systems are changed by the introduction of wells and other human stresses that modify existing groundwater levels, flow paths, and...
