Effects of Climate and land use on diversity, prevalence, and seasonal transmission of avian hematozoa in American Samoa
Carter T. Atkinson, Ruth B. Utuzurrum, Joshua O. Seamon, Mark A. Schmaedick, Dennis A. LaPointe, Chloe Apelgren, Ariel N. Egan, William Watcher-Weatherwax
2016, Technical Report HCSU-072
The indigenous forest birds of American Samoa are increasingly threatened by changing patterns of rainfall and temperature that are associated with climate change as well as environmental stressors associated with agricultural and urban development, invasive species, and new introductions of avian diseases and disease vectors. Long term changes in their...
Geochemistry of formation waters from the Wolfcamp and “Cline” shales: Insights into brine origin, reservoir connectivity, and fluid flow in the Permian Basin, USA
Mark A. Engle, Francisco R. Reyes, Matthew S. Varonka, William H. Orem, Ma Lin, Adam J. Ianno, Tiffani M. Westphal, Pei Xu, Kenneth C. Carroll
2016, Chemical Geology (425) 76-92
Despite being one of the most important oil producing provinces in the United States, information on basinal hydrogeology and fluid flow in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico is lacking. The source and geochemistry of brines from the basin were investigated (Ordovician- to...
Water quality and hydrology of Silver Lake, Oceana County, Michigan, with emphasis on lake response to nutrient loading
Angela K. Brennan, Christopher J. Hoard, Joseph W. Duris, Mary E. Ogdahl, Alan D. Steinman
2016, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5158
Executive Summary Silver Lake is a 672-acre inland lake located in Oceana County, Michigan, and is a major tourist destination due to its proximity to Lake Michigan and the surrounding outdoor recreational opportunities. In recent years, Silver Lake exhibited patterns of high phosphorus concentrations, elevated chlorophyll a concentrations, and nuisance algal...
Potentiometric surfaces of the Arnold Engineering Development Complex Area, Arnold Air Force Base, Tennessee, May and September 2011
Connor J. Haugh, John A. Robinson
2016, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5165
Arnold Air Force Base occupies about 40,000 acres in Coffee and Franklin Counties, Tennessee. The primary mission of Arnold Air Force Base is to provide risk-reduction information in the development of aerospace products through test and evaluation. This mission is achieved in part through test facilities at Arnold Engineering Development...
Innovation in monitoring: The U.S. Geological Survey Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, California, flow-station network
Jon Burau, Cathy Ruhl, Paul A. Work
2016, Fact Sheet 2015-3061
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) installed the first gage to measure the flow of water into California’s Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta from the Sacramento River in the late 1800s. Today, a network of 35 hydro-acoustic meters measure flow throughout the delta. This region is a critical part of California’s freshwater...
Geochemical characterization and dating of R tephra, a post-glacial marker bed in Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, U.S.A.
Mary Samolczyk, James W. Vallance, Joel Cubley, Gerald Osborn, Douglas H. Clark
2016, Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences (53) 202-217
The oldest postglacial lapilli–ash tephra recognized in sedimentary records surrounding Mount Rainier (Washington State, USA) is R tephra, a very early Holocene deposit that acts as an important stratigraphic and geochronologic marker bed. This multidisciplinary study incorporates tephrostratigraphy, radiocarbon dating, petrography, and electron microprobe analysis to characterize R tephra. Tephra...
The Integrated Landscape Modeling partnership - Current status and future directions
David M. Mushet, Eric J. Scherff
2016, Open-File Report 2016-1006
The Integrated Landscape Modeling (ILM) partnership is an effort by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to identify, evaluate, and develop models to quantify services derived from ecosystems, with a focus on wetland ecosystems and conservation effects. The ILM partnership uses the Integrated Valuation of...
A multidimensional representation model of geographic features
E. Lynn Usery, George Timson, Mark Coletti
2016, Open-File Report 2015-1241
A multidimensional model of geographic features has been developed and implemented with data from The National Map of the U.S. Geological Survey. The model, programmed in C++ and implemented as a feature library, was tested with data from the National Hydrography Dataset demonstrating the capability to handle changes in feature...
Hyperspectral narrowband and multispectral broadband indices for remote sensing of crop evapotranspiration and its components (transpiration and soil evaporation)
Michael T. Marshall, Prasad S. Thenkabail, Trent Biggs, Kirk Post
2016, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology (218-219) 122-134
Evapotranspiration (ET) is an important component of micro- and macro-scale climatic processes. In agriculture, estimates of ET are frequently used to monitor droughts, schedule irrigation, and assess crop water productivity over large areas. Currently, in situ measurements of ET are difficult to scale up for regional applications, so remote sensing...
Compilation of VS30 Data for the United States
Alan Yong, Eric M. Thompson, David J. Wald, Keith L. Knudsen, Jack K. Odum, William J. Stephenson, Scott Haefner
2016, Data Series 978
VS30, the time-averaged shear-wave velocity (VS) to a depth of 30 meters, is a key index adopted by the earthquake engineering community to account for seismic site conditions. VS30 is typically based on geophysical measurements of VS derived from invasive and noninvasive techniques at sites of interest. Owing to cost considerations, as well as...
Surface-water quality and suspended-sediment quantity and quality within the Big River Basin, southeastern Missouri, 2011-13
Miya N. Barr
2016, Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5171
Missouri was the leading producer of lead in the United States—as well as the world—for more than a century. One of the lead sources is known as the Old Lead Belt, located in southeast Missouri. The primary ore mineral in the region is galena, which can be found both in...
Predicting thermally stressful events in rivers with a strategy to evaluate management alternatives
K.O. Maloney, J. C. Cole, M. Schmid
2016, River Research and Applications 1428-1437
Water temperature is an important factor in river ecology. Numerous models have been developed to predict river temperature. However, many were not designed to predict thermally stressful periods. Because such events are rare, traditionally applied analyses are inappropriate. Here, we developed two logistic regression models to predict thermally stressful events...
Volatile-organic molecular characterization of shale-oil produced water from the Permian Basin
Naima A. Khan, Mark A. Engle, Barry Dungan, F. Omar Holguin, Pei Xu, Kenneth C. Carroll
2016, Chemosphere (148) 126-136
Growth in unconventional oil and gas has spurred concerns on environmental impact and interest in beneficial uses of produced water (PW), especially in arid regions such as the Permian Basin, the largest U.S. tight-oil producer. To evaluate environmental impact, treatment, and reuse potential, there is a need to characterize the...
Fish assemblage composition and mapped mesohabitat features over a range of streamflows in the Middle Rio Grande, New Mexico, winter 2011-12, summer 2012
Daniel K. Pearson, Christopher L. Braun, J. Bruce Moring
2016, Scientific Investigations Map 3350
This report documents differences in the mapped spatial extents and physical characteristics of in-channel fish habitat evaluated at the mesohabitat scale during winter 2011–12 (moderate streamflow) and summer 2012 (low streamflow) at 15 sites on the Middle Rio Grande in New Mexico starting about 3 kilometers downstream from Cochiti Dam...
Bivalve effects on the food web supporting delta smelt - A long-term study of bivalve recruitment, biomass, and grazing rate patterns with varying freshwater outflow
Jeff S. Crauder, Janet K. Thompson, Francis Parchaso, Rosa I. Anduaga, Sarah A. Pearson, Karen Gehrts, Heather Fuller, Elizabeth Wells
2016, Open-File Report 2016-1005
Executive Summary Phytoplankton is an important and limiting food source in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (the Delta) and San Francisco Bay; the decline of phytoplankton biomass is one possible factor in the pelagic organism decline and specifically in the decline of the protected delta smelt. The bivalves Corbicula fluminea andPotamocorbula amurensis...
Modeled streamflow metrics on small, ungaged stream reaches in the Upper Colorado River Basin
Lindsay V. Reynolds, Patrick B. Shafroth
2016, Data Series 974
Modeling streamflow is an important approach for understanding landscape-scale drivers of flow and estimating flows where there are no streamgage records. In this study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with Colorado State University, the objectives were to model streamflow metrics on small, ungaged streams in the Upper...
Model analysis of check dam impacts on long-term sediment and water budgets in southeast Arizona, USA
Laura M. Norman, Rewati Niraula
2016, Ecohydrology & Hydrobiology (16) 125-137
The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of check dam infrastructure on soil and water conservation at the catchment scale using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). This paired watershed study includes a watershed treated with over 2000 check dams and a Control watershed which has...
Do intracoelomic telemetry transmitters alter the post-release behaviour of migratory fish?
Alexander D.M. Wilson, Todd A. Hayden, Christopher S. Vandergoot, Richard T. Kraus, John M. Dettmers, Steven J. Cooke, Charles C. Krueger
2016, Ecology of Freshwater Fish (26) 292-300
Electronic tags have become a common tool in fish research, enhancing our understanding of how fish interact with their environment and move among different habitats, for estimating mortality and recording internal physiological states. An often-untested assumption of electronic tagging studies is that tagged fish are representative of untagged conspecifics and...
Ecological relevance of current water quality assessment unit designations in impaired rivers
Megan J. Layhee, Adam J. Sepulveda, Andrew Ray, Greg Mladenka, Lynn Van Every
2016, Science of the Total Environment (536) 198-205
Managers often nest sections of water bodies together into assessment units (AUs) to monitor and assess water quality criteria. Ideally, AUs represent an extent of waters with similar ecological, watershed, habitat and land-use conditions and no overlapping characteristics with other waters. In the United States, AUs are typically based on...
Sediment supply versus local hydraulic controls on sediment transport and storage in a river with large sediment loads
David J. Dean, David J. Topping, John C. Schmidt, Ronald E. Griffiths, Thomas A. Sabol
2016, Journal of Geophysical Research F: Earth Surface (121) 82-110
The Rio Grande in the Big Bend region of Texas, USA, and Chihuahua and Coahuila, Mexico, undergoes rapid geomorphic changes as a result of its large sediment supply and variable hydrology; thus, it is a useful natural laboratory to investigate the relative importance of flow strength and sediment supply in...
Salamander chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans) in the United States—Developing research, monitoring, and management strategies
Evan H. Campbell Grant, Erin L. Muths, Rachel A. Katz, Stefano Canessa, M. J. Adams, Jennifer R. Ballard, Lee Berger, Cheryl J. Briggs, Jeremy T. H. Coleman, Matthew J. Gray, M. Camille Harris, Reid N. Harris, Blake R. Hossack, Kathryn P. Huyvaert, Jonathan E. Kolby, Karen R. Lips, Robert E. Lovich, Hamish I. McCallum, Joseph R. Mendelson III, Priya Nanjappa, Deanna H. Olson, Jenny G. Powers, Katherine L. D. Richgels, Robin E. Russell, Benedikt R. Schmidt, Annemarieke Spitzen-van der Sluijs, Mary Kay Watry, Douglas C. Woodhams, C. LeAnn White
2016, Open-File Report 2015-1233
The recently (2013) identified pathogenic chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), poses a severe threat to the distribution and abundance of salamanders within the United States and Europe. Development of a response strategy for the potential, and likely, invasion of Bsal into the United States is crucial to protect global salamander...
Population dynamics and evaluation of alternative management strategies for nonnative Lake Trout in Priest Lake, Idaho
Elizabeth L. Ng, Jim P. Fredericks, Michael C. Quist
2016, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (36) 40-54
Lake Trout Salvelinus namaycush have been introduced widely throughout the western USA to enhance recreational fisheries, but high predatory demand can create challenges for management of yield and trophy fisheries alike. Lake Trout were introduced to Priest Lake, Idaho, during the 1920s, but few fishery-independent data are available to guide...
Resprouting and seeding hypotheses: A test of the gap-dependent model using resprouting and obligate seeding subspecies of Arctostaphylos
Jon E. Keeley, V. Thomas Parker, Michael C. Vasey
2016, Plant Ecology (217) 743-750
Ecological factors favoring either postfire resprouting or postfire obligate seeding in plants have received considerable attention recently. Three ecological models have been proposed to explain patterns of these two life history types. In this study, we test these three models using data from California chaparral. We take an...
Tomographic image of a seismically active volcano: Mammoth Mountain, California
Phillip B. Dawson, Bernard A. Chouet, Andrew M. Pitt
2016, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (121) 114-133
High-resolution tomographic P wave, S wave, and VP/VS velocity structure models are derived for Mammoth Mountain, California, using phase data from the Northern California Seismic Network and a temporary deployment of broadband seismometers. An anomalous volume (5.1 × 109 to 5.9 × 1010m3) of low P and low S wave...
Hydrologic conditions in the South Coast aquifer, Puerto Rico, 2010–15
Sigfredo Torres-Gonzalez, Jose M. Rodriguez
2016, Open-File Report 2015-1215
In 1958, the U.S. Geological Survey began documenting hydrologic conditions, including groundwater levels, groundwater withdrawals for agricultural irrigation and public water supply, and water quality, in the South Coast aquifer, Puerto Rico. This information has improved the understanding of the water resources of the region. The hydrologic data indicate that...
