Groundwater flux and nutrient loading in the northeast section of Bear Lake, Muskegon County, Michigan, 2015
Alexander R. Totten, Jessica A. Maurer, Joseph W. Duris
2017, Scientific Investigations Report 2017-5092
Bear Lake in North Muskegon, Michigan, is listed as part of the Muskegon Lake area of concern as designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This area of concern was designated as a result of eutrophication and beneficial use impairments. On the northeast end of Bear Lake, two man-made retention...
Evidence for migratory spawning behavior by morphologically distinct Cisco (Coregonus artedi) from a small inland lake
Alexander J. Ross, Brian Weidel, Mellisa Leneker, Christopher T. Solomon
2017, The American Midland Naturalist (178) 237-244
Conservation and management of rare fishes relies on managers having the most informed understanding of the underlying ecology of the species under investigation. Cisco (Coregonus artedi), a species of conservation concern, is a cold-water pelagic fish that is notoriously variable in morphometry and life history. Published reports indicate, at spawning...
Potential for Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems applications for identifying groundwater-surface water exchange in a meandering river reach
H. Pai, H. Malenda, Martin A. Briggs, K. Singha, R. González-Pinzón, M. Gooseff, S.W. Tyler, AirCTEMPS Team
2017, Geophysical Research Letters (44) 11868-11877
The exchange of groundwater and surface water (GW-SW), including dissolved constituents and energy, represents a critical yet challenging characterization problem for hydrogeologists and stream ecologists. Here, we describe the use of a suite of high spatial-resolution remote-sensing techniques, collected using a small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS), to provide novel and...
Progress and lessons learned from water-quality monitoring networks
Donna N. Myers, Amy S. Ludtke
2017, Book chapter, The science behind sustaining the world's most crucial resource
Stream-quality monitoring networks in the United States were initiated and expanded after passage of successive federal water-pollution control laws from 1948 to 1972. The first networks addressed information gaps on the extent and severity of stream pollution and served as early warning systems for spills. From 1965 to 1972, monitoring...
The hyper-enrichment of V and Zn in black shales of the Late Devonian-Early Mississippian Bakken Formation (USA)
Clint Scott, John F. Slack, Karen Duttweiler Kelley
2017, Chemical Geology (452) 24-33
Black shales of the Late Devonian to Early Mississippian Bakken Formation are characterized by high concentrations of organic carbon and the hyper-enrichment (> 500 to 1000s of mg/kg) of V and Zn. Deposition of black shales resulted from shallow seafloor depths that promoted rapid development of euxinic conditions. Vanadium hyper-enrichments, which...
Constraining the magmatic system at Mount St. Helens (2004–2008) using Bayesian inversion with physics-based models including gas escape and crystallization
Ying-Qi Wong, Paul Segall, Andrew Bradley, Kyle R. Anderson
2017, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (122) 7789-7812
Physics-based models of volcanic eruptions track conduit processes as functions of depth and time. When used in inversions, these models permit integration of diverse geological and geophysical data sets to constrain important parameters of magmatic systems. We develop a 1-D steady state conduit model for effusive eruptions including equilibrium crystallization...
Conceptual model for invasive bivalve control on wetland productivity
Rosemary Hartman, Larry R. Brown, Janet K. Thompson, Francis Parchaso
2017, Interagency Ecological Program Technical Report 91
Tidal wetlands were the historically dominant features of many coastal regions around the world, including the San Francisco Estuary (Callaway et al. 2011; Whipple et al. 2012). These mosaics of varied interconnected habitats (Mitsch and Gosselink 1993) provide a host of ecosystem services, including biodiversity maintenance, fish and wildlife habitat,...
Combining remote sensing and water-balance evapotranspiration estimates for the conterminous United States
Meredith Reitz, Gabriel B. Senay, Ward E. Sanford
2017, Remote Sensing (9)
Evapotranspiration (ET) is a key component of the hydrologic cycle, accounting for ~70% of precipitation in the conterminous U.S. (CONUS), but it has been a challenge to predict accurately across different spatio-temporal scales. The increasing availability of remotely sensed data has led to significant advances in the frequency and spatial...
Flood runoff in relation to water vapor transport by atmospheric rivers over the western United States, 1949–2015
Christopher P. Konrad, Michael D. Dettinger
2017, Geophysical Research Letters (44) 11456-11462
Atmospheric rivers (ARs) have a significant role in generating floods across the western United States. We analyze daily streamflow for water years 1949 to 2015 from 5,477 gages in relation to water vapor transport by ARs using a 6 h chronology resolved to 2.5° latitude and longitude. The probability that an...
A swath across the great divide: Kelp forests across the Samalga Pass biogeographic break
Brenda H. Konar, Matthew S. Edwards, Aaron Bland, Jacob Metzger, Alexandra Ravelo, Sarah Traiger, Ben P. Weitzman
2017, Continental Shelf Research (143) 78-88
Biogeographic breaks are often described as locations where a large number of species reach their geographic range limits. Samalga Pass, in the eastern Aleutian Archipelago, is a known biogeographic break for the spatial distribution of several species of offshore-pelagic communities, including numerous species of cold-water corals, zooplankton, fish, marine mammals,...
Exploration of diffuse and discrete sources of acid mine drainage to a headwater mountain stream in Colorado, USA
Allison Johnston, Robert L. Runkel, Alexis Navarre-Sitchler, Kamini Singha
2017, Mine Water and the Environment (36) 463-478
We investigated the impact of acid mine drainage (AMD) contamination from the Minnesota Mine, an inactive gold and silver mine, on Lion Creek, a headwater mountain stream near Empire, Colorado. The objective was to map the sources of AMD contamination, including discrete sources visible at the surface and diffuse inputs...
Application of synthetic scenarios to address water resource concerns: A management-guided case study from the Upper Colorado River Basin
Stephanie A. McAfee, Gregory T. Pederson, Connie A. Woodhouse, Gregory J. McCabe
2017, Climate Services (8) 26-35
Water managers are increasingly interested in better understanding and planning for projected resource impacts from climate change. In this management-guided study, we use a very large suite of synthetic climate scenarios in a statistical modeling framework to simultaneously evaluate how (1) average temperature and precipitation changes, (2) initial basin conditions,...
Determining fine-scale use and movement patterns of diving bird species in federal waters of the Mid-Atlantic United States using satellite telemetry
Caleb Spiegel, Alicia Berlin, Andrew Gilbert, Carrie E. Gray, William Montevecchi, Iain Stenhouse, Scott Ford, Glenn H. Olsen, Jonathan Fiely, Lucas Savoy, M. Wing Goodale, Chantelle Burke
2017, Report
Offshore wind energy development in the United States is projected to expand in the upcoming decades to meet growing energy demands and reduce fossil fuel emissions. There is particular interest in commercial offshore wind development within Federal waters (i.e., > 3 nautical miles from shore) of the mid-Atlantic. In order...
Solid-phase arsenic speciation in aquifer sediments: A micro-X-ray absorption spectroscopy approach for quantifying trace-level speciation
Sarah L. Nicholas, Melinda L. Erickson, Laurel G. Woodruff, Alan R. Knaeble, Matthew A. Marcus, Joshua K. Lynch, Brandy M. Toner
2017, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (211) 228-255
e of this research is to identify the solid-phase sources and geochemical mechanisms of release of As in aquifers of the Des Moines Lobe glacial advance. The overarching concept is that conditions present at the aquifer-aquitard interfaces promote a suite of geochemical reactions leading to mineral alteration and release of...
Estimating virus occurrence using Bayesian modeling in multiple drinking water systems of the United States
Eunice A. Varughese, Nichole E Brinkman, Emily M Anneken, Jennifer S Cashdollar, G. Shay Fout, Edward T. Furlong, Dana W. Kolpin, Susan T. Glassmeyer, Scott P Keely
2017, Science of the Total Environment (619-620) 1330-1339
Drinking water treatment plants rely on purification of contaminated source waters to provide communities with potable water. One group of possible contaminants are enteric viruses. Measurement of viral quantities in environmental water systems are often performed using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or quantitative PCR (qPCR). However, true values may be...
Discriminating between natural vs induced seismicity from long-term deformation history of intraplate faults
Maria Beatrice Magnani, Michael L. Blanpied, Heather R. DeShon, Matthew Hornbach
2017, Science Advances (3)
To assess whether recent seismicity is induced by human activity or is of natural origin, we analyze fault displacements on high-resolution seismic reflection profiles for two regions in the central United States (CUS): the Fort Worth Basin (FWB) of Texas, and the northern Mississippi embayment (NME). Since 2009 earthquake activity...
Integrated wetland management for waterfowl and shorebirds at Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge, North Carolina
Brian G. Tavernia, John D. Stanton, James E. Lyons
2017, Open-File Report 2017-1052
Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge (MNWR) offers a mix of open water, marsh, forest, and cropland habitats on 20,307 hectares in coastal North Carolina. In 1934, Federal legislation (Executive Order 6924) established MNWR to benefit wintering waterfowl and other migratory bird species. On an annual basis, the refuge staff decide how...
Macroinvertebrate communities evaluated prior to and following a channel restoration project in Silver Creek, Blaine County, Idaho, 2001-16
Dorene E. MacCoy, Terry M. Short
2017, Scientific Investigations Report 2017-5126
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with Blaine County and The Nature Conservancy, evaluated the status of macroinvertebrate communities prior to and following a channel restoration project in Silver Creek, Blaine County, Idaho. The objective of the evaluation was to determine whether 2014 remediation efforts to restore natural channel...
Organic carbon burial in global lakes and reservoirs
Raquel Mendonca, Roger A. Muller, David W. Clow, Charles Verpoorter, Peter Raymond, Lars Tranvik, Sebastian Sobek
2017, Nature Communications (8)
Burial in sediments removes organic carbon (OC) from the short-term biosphere-atmosphere carbon (C) cycle, and therefore prevents greenhouse gas production in natural systems. Although OC burial in lakes and reservoirs is faster than in the ocean, the magnitude of inland water OC burial is not well constrained. Here we generate...
Estimating discharge and nonpoint source nitrate loading to streams from three end‐member pathways using high‐frequency water quality data
Matthew P. Miller, Anthony J. Tesoriero, Krista Hood, Silvia Terziotti, David M. Wolock
2017, Water Resources Research (53) 10201-10216
The myriad hydrologic and biogeochemical processes taking place in watersheds occurring across space and time are integrated and reflected in the quantity and quality of water in streams and rivers. Collection of high‐frequency water quality data with sensors in surface waters provides new opportunities to disentangle these processes and quantify...
The U.S. Geological Survey Peak-Flow File Data Verification Project, 2008–16
Karen R. Ryberg, Burl B. Goree, Tara Williams-Sether, Robert R. Mason, Jr.
2017, Scientific Investigations Report 2017-5119
Annual peak streamflow (peak flow) at a streamgage is defined as the maximum instantaneous flow in a water year. A water year begins on October 1 and continues through September 30 of the following year; for example, water year 2015 extends from October 1, 2014, through September 30, 2015. The...
Timing of warm water refuge use in Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge by manatees—Results and insights from Global Positioning System telemetry data
Daniel H. Slone, Susan M. Butler, James P. Reid, Catherine G. Haase
2017, Open-File Report 2017-1146
Managers at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge (CRNWR) desire to update their management plan regarding the operation of select springs including Three Sisters Springs. They wish to refine existing parameters used to predict the presence of federally threatened Trichechus manatus latirostris (Florida manatee) in...
Design- and model-based recommendations for detecting and quantifying an amphibian pathogen in environmental samples
Brittany A. Mosher, Kathryn Huyvaert, Tara E. Chestnut, Jacob L. Kerby, Joseph D. Madison, Larissa L. Bailey
2017, Ecolology and Evolution (7) 10952-10962
Accurate pathogen detection is essential for developing management strategies to address emerging infectious diseases, an increasingly prominent threat to wildlife. Sampling for free-living pathogens outside of their hosts has benefits for inference and study efficiency, but is still uncommon. We used a laboratory experiment to...
Bedrock geology and hydrostratigraphy of the Edwards and Trinity aquifers within the Driftwood and Wimberley 7.5-minute quadrangles, Hays and Comal Counties, Texas
Allan K. Clark, Robert R. Morris
2017, Scientific Investigations Map 3386
The Edwards and Trinity aquifers are major sources of water in south-central Texas and are both classified as major aquifers by the State of Texas. The population in Hays and Comal Counties is rapidly growing, increasing demands on the area’s water resources. To help effectively manage the water resources in...
Suitability of river delta sediment as proppant, Missouri and Niobrara Rivers, Nebraska and South Dakota, 2015
Ronald B. Zelt, Christopher M. Hobza, Bethany L. Burton, Nathaniel J. Schaepe, Nadine M. Piatak
2017, Scientific Investigations Report 2017-5105
Sediment management is a challenge faced by reservoir managers who have several potential options, including dredging, for mitigation of storage capacity lost to sedimentation. As sediment is removed from reservoir storage, potential use of the sediment for socioeconomic or ecological benefit could potentially defray some costs of its removal. Rivers...
