Revisiting chlorophyll a thresholds for San Francisco Bay: Insights from observations of phytoplankton molecular abundance
Daniel Killam, Keith Bouma-Gregson, Martha Sutula, Raphael Kudela, James Hagy, Stephanie Anderson, David Senn
2026, Harmful Algae (154)
Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) are a hazard for coastal environments worldwide; identifying screening thresholds of chlorophyll-a (chl-a) associated with increased risk of HABs is a management priority. Molecular surveillance of coastal phytoplankton and bivalve biotoxins could be used to link chl-a with HAB risk, but requires an understanding of whether...
Bathymetric and velocimetric surveys at highway bridges crossing the Missouri River near Kansas City, Missouri, August 8–9, 2023
Richard J. Huizinga, Benjamin C. Rivers
2026, Scientific Investigations Report 2026-5124
Bathymetric and velocimetric data were collected by the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Missouri Department of Transportation, near 8 bridge crossings of the Missouri River near Kansas City, Missouri, on August 8–9, 2023. A multibeam echosounder mapping system was used to obtain channel- bed elevations for river reaches...
Effects of groundwater withdrawals for water bottling and municipal use, Wards Brook Valley, Maine and New Hampshire
John R Mullaney, Janet R. Barclay, Jennifer S. Stanton, Carl S Carlson, Madeleine Holland
2026, Preprint
Hydrologic models for the Wards Brook valley near Fryeburg, Maine were developed for historical (2016 – 2021) and hypothetical future conditions (2046 – 2065 and 2080 – 2099) to understand the effects of groundwater withdrawals for bottled water and municipal use on hydrologic conditions (stream base flows and groundwater levels)....
Habitat-based predictions of bridle shiner (Notropis bifrenatus) in the northeastern U.S.
Lara S. Katz, Stephen M. Coghlan Jr., Matthew A. Carpenter, Michael T. Kinnison, Joseph D. Zydlewski
2026, Ecology and Evolution (16)
We sought to assess bridle shiner (Notropis bifrenatus) habitat associations at local and regional scales across southern Maine and New Hampshire. We used local habitat data at 95 Maine sites to predict occupancy with classification and regression trees (CART). We then used ensemble species distribution models (SDMs)...
Inference of pattern-based geological CO2 sequestration and oil recovery potential in a commingled main pay and residual oil zone CO2-EOR flood
C. Ozgen Karacan, Emil Attanasi, Sean T. Brennan, Peter D. Warwick
2026, Geoenergy Science and Engineering (260)
Several detailed studies have shown that residual oil zones (ROZs) can present significant resources for additional hydrocarbon recovery as well as subsurface carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration via enhanced oil recovery by injecting CO2 (CO2-EOR). Field development strategies included new wells drilled dedicated to main pay zones (MPZ) and ROZs,...
Multiple-well monitoring site adjacent to the Midway- Sunset and Buena Vista Oil Fields, Kern County, California
Rhett R. Everett, Janice M. Gillespie, Riley Gannon, Anthony A. Brown, Andrew Morita
2026, Preprint
Groundwater quality in and around oil fields in the Southern San Joaquin Valley is of interest to many California residents that rely heavily on groundwater for domestic, commercial, and agricultural use. To help assess the effects of historical oil-field activities and natural geologic sources on groundwater near the southwest margins...
Groundwater quality near an oil field in a stream-dominated recharge setting, California, USA
Jennifer S. Stanton, Michael J. Stephens, Matthew K. Landon, David H. Shimabukuro, Andrew G. Hunt, Justin T. Kulongoski, Isabelle M. Cozzarelli, Theron A. Sowers
2026, PLOS Water (5)
Alluvial valley aquifers are important sources of water supply in many areas but effects of co-located oil and gas development on these resources have not been widely reported, especially in settings where recharge is dominated by stream infiltration. Interpreting the presence of geochemical indicators in the context of hydrology, geology,...
Tracking baseflow supply dynamics using SWOT data from small groundwater-dominated lakes
Martin A. Briggs, Merritt Elizabeth Harlan, David M. Rey, Danielle K. Hare, Denis R. LeBlanc, David F. Boutt, Michael N. Gooseff
2026, Hydrological Processes (40)
In situ surface-water monitoring strategies are biased towards larger perennial streams and lakes and are generally not designed to track mechanisms of baseflow supply contributed by the dynamic storage of aquifers. Additionally, small (< 1 km2) groundwater-influenced lakes and wetlands globally have little in situ monitoring infrastructure. We explored the...
Suspended-sediment and phosphorus response in a fire-affected central Montana headwater catchment
Gregory D. Clark, Michael W. Suplee, Haylie M. Brown, Molly A. Moloney, Rodney R. Caldwell
2026, Journal of Soils and Sediments (26)
Purpose Eutrophication and nuisance filamentous algal blooms (i.e. Cladophora) are increasingly common occurrences throughout much of the western United States. Wildfire may be contributing to the frequency and magnitude of algal blooms through excess sediment and nutrient loading to streams and rivers. Our objective was to evaluate the effects the 2021...
Post-wildfire water quality and aquatic ecosystem response in the U.S. Pacific Northwest: science and monitoring gaps
Sara Wall, Jana E. Compton, Ashley A. Coble, Beth M. Haley, Jiajia Lin, Allison Myers-Pigg, Justin Kevin Reale, Katie Wampler, Allison Swartz, Kevan Moffett, Kevin D. Bladon, Kurt Carpenter, Heejun Chang, Junjie Chen, David Donahue, Chris S. Eckley, Amanda K. Hohner, Peter M. Kiffney, Lorrayne Miralha, Peter Regier, Joshua Seeds, Mark River
2026, Environmental Research: Water
An increase in the occurrence of large, high severity wildfires in the western Pacific Northwest (PNW), USA, has created an urgent need for science to better inform forest management and policy decisions to maintain source water quality in the region. The western PNW faces similar challenges to other regions with...
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in waters associated with oil and gas development in the Denver Basin
Matthew S. Varonka, Aaron M. Jubb, Bonnie McDevitt, Jenna L. Shelton, Elliott P. Barnhart, Denise M. Akob, Isabelle M. Cozzarelli
2026, Scientific Reports (16)
Use of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the petroleum industry could be a cause for concern due to the large volumes of produced water (PW) generated during oil and gas extraction, the reuse of these wastes in water-stressed regions, and adverse health outcomes related to PFAS...
Evaluating machine learning approaches to identify and predict oil and gas produced water lithium concentrations
Emil Attanasi, Bonnie McDevitt, Philip A. Freeman, Timothy Coburn
2026, Data Science in Science (5)
Recently, the demand for battery-grade lithium has substantially increased, largely due to electrification of the transportation sector. The search for new lithium sources has turned to produced waters (frequently brines), a large-volume wastewater by-product of oil and gas extraction. Geochemical analysis indicates the presence of varying concentrations of lithium from...
Estimating the magnitude and frequency of floods at ungaged locations on urban streams in Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina, using data through the 2022 water year
Daniel M. Wagner, David E. Ladd
2026, Scientific Investigations Report 2025-5104
In 2024, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Tennessee Department of Transportation, updated the methods for predicting the magnitude and frequency of floods at ungaged locations on streams in urban areas in Tennessee. The study area included 136 streamgages in urban areas in Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South...
James Buttle Review: A synthesis of riparian plant water use over two decades in North American drylands
Emily C. Palmquist, Pamela L. Nagler, Kiona Ogle, Claudia DiMartini, Jeffrey R. Kennedy, Joel B. Sankey
2026, Hydrological Processes (40)
Assessing riparian ecosystem water use, particularly transpiration from vegetation and evaporation from soils (‘plant water use’, hereafter), is key to developing sound water management approaches. In western North America, a multidecadal drought is reducing water availability and increasing the use of detailed water budgets. Questions related to both removal of...
Flood- inundation maps for Río Grande De Loíza in and near Caguas, Puerto Rico, 2026
Chad J. Ostheimer, Legna M. Torres-Garcia, Julieta M. Gomez-Fragoso
2026, Scientific Investigations Report 2025-5112
Digital flood- inundation maps for a 2.7- mile reach of Río Grande De Loíza in Caguas, Puerto Rico, were created by the U.S. Geological Survey. Water- surface profiles were computed for the stream reach by using a one- dimensional, steady- state, step- backwater model. The model was calibrated to the...
Migration water temperature and heat stress assessments in western Alaska Chinook salmon overlapping the 2019 heatwave
Vanessa R. von Biela, Amy M. Regish, Stephen D. McCormick, Joseph Spaeder, Kevin Whitworth, Justin Leon, Daniel Gillikin, Zachary Liller, Renae Ivanoff, Jenefer Bell, Sean D. Larson, Michael P. Carey, Christian E. Zimmerman
2026, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
Chinook salmon population declines span their geographic range with climate hypothesized as a major driver. Concerns of warming freshwater temperatures in their northern range gained urgency during 2019 when a heatwave coincided with premature mortality. This study examined heat stress during the 2019 heatwave compared to subsequent years and described...
Water-budget simulations for selected watersheds in Cameron County, Texas, 2022–23
Darwin J. Ockerman, Namjeong Choi
2026, Scientific Investigations Report 2025-5098
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the City of Brownsville, Texas, configured and calibrated a set of hydrologic models for a 217-square-mile study area in Cameron County in south Texas during 2022–23. The models were used for estimating runoff and quantities of water diverted from the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo...
Ensemble methods for history matching and uncertainty quantification with a watershed model
Michael N. Fienen, Andrew J. Long, Katherine H. Markovich, Adel E. Haj, Matthew Irwin Barker
2026, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (62)
History matching of large hydrologic models is challenging due to data sparsity and non-unique process combinations (and associated parameters) that can produce similar model predictions. We develop an ensemble-based history matching (and uncertainty quantification) approach using an iterative ensemble smoother (iES) method for three cutouts of the...
Large streamflow differences between forested and urbanized watersheds in the energy-limited eastern United States: The role of evapotranspiration and impervious surfaces
G. Sun, Z. Bian, K. Khand, P. V. Caldwell, J. Boggs, C. Wang, Y. Chen, N. Liu, Y. Zhang, X. Chen, Gabriel Senay, S. G. McNulty
2026, Water Resources Research (62)
Urban forests and other green infrastructures have been viewed as part of the “Nature-based Solutions” (NbS) to mitigate emerging urban environmental change. This study focuses on the role of evapotranspiration (ET) in regulating water balances of small watersheds in the eastern United States. We compared streamflow and ET patterns at...
Origins, evolutions, and future directions of Landsat science products for advancing global inland water and coastal ocean observations
Benjamin Page, Christopher J. Crawford, Saeed Arab, Gail Schmidt, Christopher Barnes, Danika F. Wellington
2026, Earth System Science Data (18) 779-800
In April 2020, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center introduced a Level 2 provisional Aquatic Reflectance (AR) product for the Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), marking the initial phase in developing a standardized global product for Landsat-derived surface water measurements. The goal of...
Estimating paleotemperature using stable isotopes of soil-formed phyllosilicates from paleosols: A review
Kate Andrzejewski, Julia A. McIntosh, Erik L. Gulbranson, Daniel Ibarra
2026, Earth-Science Reviews (275)
Fossilized soils, or paleosols, contain soil-formed phyllosilicates whose stable isotopic compositions may be used to calculate paleotemperature and thus reconstruct ancient terrestrial environments. Though paleosols are common in the geologic record, the use of phyllosilicates as paleotemperature proxies is limited in the literature owing to difficulties with selecting optimal paleosols,...
Environmental DNA pilot monitoring program for invasive species and biodiversity assessments on Santa Cruz Island: Interim report, September 2025
Adam Sepulveda, Susanna Theroux
2026, Science Report NPS/SR—2026/381
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Southern California Coastal Water Research Project supported Channel Islands National Park, The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC) Santa Cruz Island Preserve, and University of California San Diego (UCSD) researchers in using environmental DNA sampling to monitor for invasive Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) and to describe spatial...
Drinking water arsenic, urinary arsenic biomarkers, and cognitive impairment in the REGARDS study
Meghan Angley, Yijia Zhang, Anne E. Nigra, Melissa A. Lombard, Matthew O. Gribble, Liping Lu, Frederick W. Unverzagt, Leslie A. McClure, Suzanne E. Judd, Mary Cushman, John Brockman, Ka Kahe
2026, Environmental Research (294)
BackgroundThere are several pathways by which inorganic arsenic (iAs) exposure can affect cognition among adults. Few epidemiologic studies evaluate iAs in water and inter-individual differences in urinary arsenic toxicokinetics. We aimed to estimate the association between individual-level urinary arsenic biomarkers, county-level iAs in...
Frameworks for assessing tsunami hazard and risk
Natalia Zamora, Anita Grezio, Maria Papathoma-Kohle, Fatemeh Jalayer, Dimitra Salmanidou, Thomas E. Parsons, Eric L. Geist, Jacopo Selva, Mathilde B. Sørensen, Irina Rafliana
Mathilde B. Sørensen, Jorn Behrens, Fatemeh Jalayer, Finn Løvholt, Stefano Lorito, Irina Rafliana, Mario A. Salgado-Gálvez, Jacopo Selva, editor(s)
2026, Book chapter, Probabilistic tsunami hazard and risk analysis
Tsunamis are multiscale phenomena resulting from a water column displacement that may be induced by multiple sources, and range from local scale inundation processes to ocean-wide scale wave propagation. Different strategies may be required to model tsunami evolution at different scales and to characterize various intensity measures. Research in tsunami...
Carbon sequestration along a gradient of tidal marsh degradation in response to sea level rise
Mona Huyzentruyt, Maarten Wens, Gregory S. Fivash, David Walters, Steven Bouillon, Joel Carr, Glenn Guntenspergen, Matt L. Kirwan, Stijn Temmerman
2026, Biogeosciences (23) 851-865
Tidal marshes are considered one of the world's most efficient ecosystems for belowground organic carbon sequestration and hence climate mitigation. Marsh systems are however also vulnerable to degradation due to climate-induced sea level rise, whereby marsh vegetation conversion to open water often follows distinct spatial patterns: levees...
