Bedrock geologic map of the Springfield 7.5- x 15-minute quadrangle, Windsor County, Vermont, and Sullivan County, New Hampshire
Gregory J. Walsh, Peter M. Valley, Thomas R. Armstrong, Nicholas M. Ratcliffe, Arthur J. Merschat, Beau J. Gentry
2020, Scientific Investigations Map 3462
The bedrock geology of the 7.5- by 15-minute Springfield quadrangle consists of highly deformed and metamorphosed Mesoproterozoic through Devonian metasedimentary and meta-igneous rocks. In the west, Mesoproterozoic gneisses of the Mount Holly Complex are the oldest rocks and form the eastern side of the Chester dome. The Moretown slice structurally...
Hydrogeology and groundwater geochemistry of till confining units and confined aquifers in glacial deposits near Litchfield, Cromwell, Akeley, and Olivia, Minnesota, 2014–18
Jared J. Trost, Anna-Turi Maher, William W. Simpkins, Alyssa N. Witt, James R. Stark, Justin Blum, Andrew M. Berg
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5127
Confined (or buried) aquifers of glacial origin overlain by till confining units provide drinking water to hundreds of thousands of Minnesota residents. The sustainability of these groundwater resources is not well understood because hydraulic properties of till that control vertical groundwater fluxes (leakage) to underlying aquifers are largely unknown. The...
Approaches to highly parameterized inversion: PEST++ Version 5, a software suite for parameter estimation, uncertainty analysis, management optimization and sensitivity analysis
Jeremy T. White, Randall J. Hunt, Michael N. Fienen, John E. Doherty
2020, Techniques and Methods 7-C26
PEST++ Version 5 extends and enhances the functionality of the PEST++ Version 3 software suite, providing environmental modeling practitioners access to updated Version 3 tools as well as new tools to support decision making with environmental models. Version 5 of PEST++ includes tools for global sensitivity analysis (PESTPP-SEN); least-squares parameter...
Geology and assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources of the Yenisey-Khatanga Basin Province
Timothy R. Klett, Janet K. Pitman
2020, Professional Paper 1824-R
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) assessed the potential for undiscovered oil and gas resources of the Yenisey-Khatanga Basin Province as part of the USGS Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal. The province is situated between the Taimyr-Kara high (Kara block, Central Taimyr fold belt, and South Taimyr fold belt) and the Siberian craton....
A probabilistic assessment of tephra-fall hazards at Hanford, Washington, from a future eruption of Mount St. Helens
Larry G. Mastin, Alexa R. Van Eaton, Hans F. Schwaiger
2020, Open-File Report 2020-1133
Hanford, Washington (USA) is the construction site of a multi-billion-dollar high-level nuclear waste treatment facility. This site lies 200 kilometers (km) east of Mount St. Helens (MSH), the most active volcano in the contiguous United States. Tephra from a future MSH eruption could pose a hazard to the air intake...
Living with wildfire in Ashland, Oregon: 2020 data report
Hannah Brenkert-Smith, Chris Chambers, Katie Gibble, Christopher M. Barth, Colleen Donovan, Carolyn Wagner, Alison Lerch, James Meldrum, Patricia A. Champ
2020, Report
Wildfire affects many types of communities. Improved understandings of urban conflagrations are leading some fire-prone communities, such as Ashland, Oregon, to expand their attention from focusing solely on the intermix fringe to managing wildfire threats across more urbanized wildland urban interface (WUI) communities. The core intent of this project was...
Alaska and Landsat
U.S. Geological Survey
2020, Fact Sheet 2020-3068
Alaska’s landscapes are changing at a more rapid rate than those of the lower 48. Its large size makes the collection of aerial surveys—a biannual occurrence for the conterminous United States—cost-prohibitive. That means the Landsat series of land imaging satellites offer the only publicly available, up-to-date imagery of land conditions...
Maine and Landsat
U.S. Geological Survey
2020, Fact Sheet 2020-3066
Maine is a place of rocky coastlines, of rich maritime history symbolized by lighthouses dotting the ocean bluffs, and of wondrous nature areas like the granite and spruce islands of Acadia National Park. But Maine is a place of changes, too. Climate variability has brought the state heavier and more...
Ohio and Landsat
U.S. Geological Survey
2020, Fact Sheet 2020-3065
In Ohio, remote-sensing systems such as Landsat play an important role in monitoring natural resources and informing management decisions on everything from dangerous freshwater algal blooms to gypsy moth defoliation and more. Landsat imagery underpins public and private sector decisions in Ohio and across the Nation for effective adaptation to...
New Mexico and Landsat
U.S. Geological Survey
2020, Fact Sheet 2020-3060
New Mexico relies on observations from the Landsat series of satellites operated by the U.S. Geological Survey. Data from Landsat also assist New Mexico in managing its precious water resources for agriculture, recreation, and industrial and community consumption. Landsat supports a variety of public and private sector decisions across New...
Minnesota and Landsat
U.S. Geological Survey
2020, Fact Sheet 2020-3059
Landsat land-imaging satellites underpin public and private sector decisions in the Minnesota and across the Nation for effective adaptation to changing landscapes. Those decisions often lead to enhanced agricultural productivity, smart urban development, and sustainable forest management. Landsat also enables more accurate inland lake water-quality monitoring, increased disaster resilience and...
Water resources of Red River Parish, Louisiana
Angela L. Robinson, Vincent E. White
2020, Fact Sheet 2020-3053
Information concerning the availability, use, and quality of water in Red River Parish, Louisiana, is critical for proper water-supply management. The purpose of this fact sheet is to present information that can be used by water managers, parish residents, and others for stewardship of this vital resource. In 2014, about...
Water resources of Bienville Parish, Louisiana
Angela L. Robinson, Vincent E. White
2020, Fact Sheet 2020-3052
Information concerning the availability, use, and quality of water in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, is critical for proper water-supply management. The purpose of this fact sheet is to present information that can be used by water managers, parish residents, and others for stewardship of this vital resource. In 2014, about 13.03...
Optimization assessment of a groundwater-level observation network in the Middle Rio Grande Basin, New Mexico
Andre B. Ritchie, Jeff D. Pepin
2020, Scientific Investigations Report 2020-5007
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority (ABCWUA), measures groundwater levels continuously (hourly) and discretely (semiannually and annually) at a network of wells and piezometers (hereafter called the observation network) within the Middle Rio Grande Basin in central New Mexico. Groundwater levels that...
The Long-term effect of bleeding for Limulus amebocyte lysate on annual survival and recapture of tagged horseshoe crabs
David R. Smith, Joshua Newhard, Conor P. McGowan, C. Alyssa Butler
2020, Frontiers in Marine Science (7)
In the U.S., 525,000 horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) per year have been captured during 2013–2017, brought to biomedical facilities, and bled to produce Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL), then mostly released to the area of capture. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission estimates short-term bleeding-induced mortality to be 15% (4% to...
Bathymetric map, surface area, and capacity of Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees, northeastern Oklahoma, 2019
Shelby L. Hunter, A.R. Trevisan, Jennifer Villa, Kevin A. Smith
2020, Scientific Investigations Map 3467
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Grand River Dam Authority, completed a high-resolution multibeam bathymetric survey to compute a new area and capacity table for Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees in northeastern Oklahoma. Area and capacity tables identify the relation between the elevation of the water surface...
Subsea permafrost carbon stocks and climate change sensitivity estimated by expert assessment
Sara Sayedi, B.F. Thornton, Benjamin Abbott, Jennifer M. Frederick, Jorien E. Vonk, Paul Overduin, Christina Schadel, E.A.G. Schuur, A. Bourbonnais, N. Demidova, Anatoly Gavrilov, Shengping He, Gustaf Gustaf Hugelius, Martin Jakobsson, Miriam C. Jones, DoongJoo Joung, Gleb Kraev, Robie W. Macdonald, A. David McGuire, Cuicui Mu, M. O’Regan, Kathryn M. Schreiner, Christian Stranne, Elena Pizhankova, A. Vasiliev, S. Westermann, Jay P. Zarnetske, Tingjun Zhang, M Ghandehari, Sarah Baeumler, Brian C. Brown, Rebecca J. Frei
2020, Environmental Research Letters (15)
The continental shelves of the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas contain large stocks of organic matter (OM) and methane (CH4), representing a potential ecosystem feedback to climate change not included in international climate agreements. We performed a structured expert assessment with 25 permafrost researchers to combine quantitative...
Building loss in WUI disasters: Evaluating the core components of the wildland-urban interface definition
Michael D. Caggiano, Todd Hawbaker, Benjamin Gannon, Chad Hoffman
2020, Fire (3)
Accurate maps of the wildland–urban interface (WUI) are critical for the development of effective land management policies, conducting risk assessments, and the mitigation of wildfire risk. Most WUI maps identify areas at risk from wildfire by overlaying coarse-scale housing data with land cover or vegetation data. However,...
Gas hydrate quantification in Walker Ridge block 313, Gulf of Mexico, from full-waveform inversion of ocean-bottom seismic data
Jiliang Wang, Priyank Jaiswal, Seth S. Haines, Yihong Yang, Patrick E. Hart
2020, Interpretation (8) T27-T42
The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) Joint Industry Project Leg 2 logging-while-drilling data in Walker Ridge lease block 313 (WR313) in the GOM detected gas hydrate in coarse- and fine-grained sediments at sites WR313-G and WR313-H. The coarse-grained units are thin (<span...
Potomac tributary report: A summary of trends in tidal water quality and associated factors
Jennifer L. Keisman, Rebecca Murphy, Olivia H. Devereux, J. Harcum, R. Karrh, M. Lane, E. Perry, James S. Webber, Zhaoying Wei, Qian Zhang, Meghan Nicole Petenbrink
2020, Report
The Potomac Tributary Report summarizes change over time in a suite of monitored tidal water quality parameters and associated potential drivers of those trends for the time period 1985 – 2018, and provides a brief description of the current state of knowledge explaining these observed changes. Water quality parameters described...
Estimating the invasion extent of Asian swamp eel (Monopterus: Synbranchidae) in an altered river of the south-eastern United States
J. R. Johnson, A. T. Taylor, James M. Long
2020, Marine and Freshwater Research (72) 811-822
The first reported invasion of Asian swamp eels (Monopterus albus, ASE) in the continental United States was in the state of Georgia in 1994. This population was first discovered within several ponds on a private nature centre, but the ponds drained via an outflow pipe into marsh habitats...
Fish out of water: Insights from a case study of a highly social animal that failed the mirror self-recognition test
Shannon Barber-Meyer, Lori J. Schmidt
2020, International Journal of Comparative Psychology (33)
Mirror self-recognition (MSR) tests have been conducted with a variety of species with the aim of examining whether subject animals have the capacity for self-awareness. To date, the majority of animals that have convincingly passed are highly social mammals whose wild...
Editorial: Plant-soil interactions under changing climate
Sanna Sevanto, Charlotte Grossiord, Tamir Klein, Sasha C. Reed
2020, Frontiers in Plant Science (11)
The health and well-being of plants and soil is crucial for all life on Earth. It is well-known that vegetation cover follows climatic zones, and plants respond to climatic drivers such as temperature and precipitation (Seddon et al., 2016; Kattge et al., 2020). It is also well-known that plant health...
Geologic map and borehole stratigraphy of Hinkley Valley and vicinity, San Bernardino County, California
David M. Miller, Victoria E. Langenheim, Elizabeth K. Haddon
2020, Scientific Investigations Map 3458
Hinkley Valley, in the central to western Mojave Desert of southeastern California, has a long historical record owing to its position as a crossroads for rail and road traffic and its position adjacent to the Mojave River. Subflow in the Mojave River provided groundwater recharge that maintained water consumption and...
Permafrost mapping with electrical resistivity tomography in two wetland systems north of the Tanana River, Interior Alaska
Christopher H. Conaway, Cordell Johnson, Thomas Lorenson, Merritt R. Turetsky, Eugénie S. Euskirchen, Mark Waldrop, Peter W. Swarzenski
2020, Journal of Environmental & Engineering Geophysics (2) 199-209
Surface-based 2D electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) surveys were used to characterize permafrost distribution at wetland sites on the alluvial plain north of the Tanana River, 20 km southwest of Fairbanks, Alaska, in June and September 2014. The sites were part of an ecologically-sensitive research area characterizing biogeochemical response of this...
