Characteristic length scales and time-averaged transport velocities of suspended sediment in the mid-Atlantic Region, USA
James Pizzuto, Edward R. Schenk, Cliff R. Hupp, Allen Gellis, Greg Noe, Elyse Williamson, Diana L. Karwan, Michael O'Neal, Julia Marquard, Rolf E. Aalto, Denis Newbold
2014, Water Resources Research (50) 790-805
Watershed Best Management Practices (BMPs) are often designed to reduce loading from particle-borne contaminants, but the temporal lag between BMP implementation and improvement in receiving water quality is difficult to assess because particles are only moved downstream episodically, resting for long periods in storage between transport events. A theory is...
Retrospective analysis of associations between water quality and toxic blooms of golden alga (Prymnesium parvum) in Texas reservoirs: Implications for understanding dispersal mechanisms and impacts of climate change
Reynaldo Patino, D. Dawson, Matthew M. VanLandeghem
2014, Harmful Algae (33) 1-11
Toxic blooms of golden alga (GA, Prymnesium parvum) in Texas typically occur in winter or early spring. In North America, they were first reported in Texas in the 1980s, and a marked range expansion occurred in 2001. Although there is concern about the influence of climate change on the future...
Distribution and transmission of the highly pathogenic parasite Ichthyophonus in marine fishes of Alaska
Jacob L. Gregg, Courtney A. Grady, Rachel L. Thompson, Maureen K. Purcell, Carolyn S. Friedman, Paul K. Hershberger
2014, Report
A combination of field surveys, molecular typing, and laboratory experiments were used to improve our understanding of the distribution and transmission mechanisms of fish parasites in the genus Ichthyophonus. Ichthyophonus spp. infections were detected from the Bering Sea to the coast of Oregon in 10 of 13 host species surveyed....
Real-time water quality ,onitoring in Lake Maumelle, Arkansas
William R. Green, Paul R. Easley
2014, Lakeline 21-25
No abstract available....
Survival and behaviour of juvenile unionid mussels exposed to thermal stress and dewatering in the presence of a sediment temperature gradient
L. Archambault, W. Gregory Cope, Thomas J. Kwak
2014, Freshwater Biology (59) 601-613
Freshwater mussels (Unionidae) are a highly imperilled faunal group. One critical threat is thermal sensitivity, because global climate change and other anthropogenic activities contribute to increasing stream temperature and altered hydrologic flow that may be detrimental to freshwater mussels. We incorporated four benthic environmental components - temperature, sediment, water...
Wetland Accretion Rate Model of Ecosystem Resilience (WARMER) and its application to habitat sustainability for endangered species in the San Francisco Estuary
Kathleen M. Swanson, Judith Z. Drexler, David H. Schoellhamer, Karen M. Thorne, Michael L. Casazza, Cory T. Overton, John C. Callaway, John Y. Takekawa
2014, Estuaries and Coasts (37) 476-492
Salt marsh faunas are constrained by specific habitat requirements for marsh elevation relative to sea level and tidal range. As sea level rises, changes in relative elevation of the marsh plain will have differing impacts on the availability of habitat for marsh obligate species. The Wetland Accretion Rate Model for...
How much land is needed for feral pig hunting in Hawai'i?
Steven C. Hess, James D. Jacobi
2014, Pacific Conservation Biology (30) 54-56
Hunting is often considered to be incompatible with conservation of native biota and watershed functions in Hawai'i. Management actions for conservation generally exclude large non-native mammals from natural areas, thereby reducing the amount of land area available for hunting activities and the maintenance of sustainable game populations. An approach which...
Water resources management in the Ganges Basin: a comparison of three strategies for conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water
Mahfuzur R. Khan, Clifford I. Voss, Winston Yu, Holly A. Michael
2014, Water Resources Management (28) 1235-1250
The most difficult water resources management challenge in the Ganges Basin is the imbalance between water demand and seasonal availability. More than 80 % of the annual flow in the Ganges River occurs during the 4-month monsoon, resulting in widespread flooding. During the rest of the year, irrigation, navigation, and...
Watershed-scale modeling of streamflow change in incised montane meadows
Hedeff I. Essaid, Barry R. Hill
2014, Water Resources Research (50) 2657-2678
Land use practices have caused stream channel incision and water table decline in many montane meadows of the Western United States. Incision changes the magnitude and timing of streamflow in water supply source watersheds, a concern to resource managers and downstream water users. The hydrology of montane meadows under natural...
Statistical evaluation of variables affecting occurrence of hydrocarbons in aquifers used for public supply, California
Matthew K. Landon, Carmen A. Burton, Tracy A. Davis, Kenneth Belitz, Tyler D. Johnson
2014, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (50) 179-195
The variables affecting the occurrence of hydrocarbons in aquifers used for public supply in California were assessed based on statistical evaluation of three large statewide datasets; gasoline oxygenates also were analyzed for comparison with hydrocarbons. Benzene is the most frequently detected (1.7%) compound among 17 hydrocarbons analyzed at generally low...
Nitrogen deposition effects on diatom communities in lakes from three National Parks in Washington State
Richard W. Sheibley, Mihaela Enache, Peter W. Swarzenski, Patrick W. Moran, James R. Foreman
2014, Water, Air, & Soil Pollution (225)
The goal of this study was to document if lakes in National Parks in Washington have exceeded critical levels of nitrogen (N) deposition, as observed in other Western States. We measured atmospheric N deposition, lake water quality, and sediment diatoms at our study lakes. Water chemistry showed that our study...
Historic and recent nesting records of Turkey Vultures in South Dakota
Lawrence D. Igl, Brian J. Chepulis, Kyle E. McLean
2014, South Dakota Bird Notes (66) 8-17
Present-day vultures are generally classified into two distinct groups: Old World vultures and new World vultures. The two groups share morphological and behavioral characters (e.g. scavenger diet, energy-efficient soaring, mostly featherless head), but historically the two groups were considered phylogenetically distant with long and independent histories (Rich 198., Wink 1995,...
Estrogen and androgen receptor activities of hydraulic fracturing chemicals and surface and ground water in a drilling-dense region
Christopher D. Kassotis, Donald E. Tillitt, J. Wade Davis, Anette M. Hormann, Susan C. Nagel
2014, Endocrinology (155) 897-907
The rapid rise in natural gas extraction using hydraulic fracturing increases the potential for contamination of surface and ground water from chemicals used throughout the process. Hundreds of products containing more than 750 chemicals and components are potentially used throughout the extraction process, including more than 100 known...
Effects of wetland management on carrying capacity of diving ducks and shorebirds in a coastal estuary
L. Arriana Brand, John Y. Takekawa, Joel Shinn, Tanya Graham, Kevin Buffington, K. Benjamin Gustafson, Lacy M. Smith, Sarah E. Spring, A. Keith Miles
2014, Waterbirds (37) 52-67
With global loss of natural wetlands, managed wetlands increasingly support energy requirements for wintering shorebirds and waterfowl. Despite numerous studies of avian bioenergetics in freshwater systems, less is known of the energetic capacity of estuarine systems. In San Francisco Bay, managed saline ponds converted from former commercial salt evaporation ponds...
Assessment of floodplain vulnerability during extreme Mississippi River flood 2011
Allison E. Goodwell, Zhenduo Zhu, Debsunder Dutta, Jonathan A. Greenberg, Praveen Kumar, Marcelo H. Garcia, Bruce L. Rhoads, Robert R. Holmes Jr., Gary Parker, David P. Berretta, Robert B. Jacobson
2014, Environmental Science & Technology (48) 2619-2625
Regional change in the variability and magnitude of flooding could be a major consequence of future global climate change. Extreme floods have the capacity to rapidly transform landscapes and expose landscape vulnerabilities through highly variable spatial patterns of inundation, erosion, and deposition. We use the historic activation of the Birds...
Agricultural conversion without external water and nutrient inputs reduces terrestrial vegetation productivity
W. Kolby Smith, Cory C. Cleveland, Sasha C. Reed, Steven W. Running
2014, Geophysical Research Letters (41) 449-455
Driven by global population and standard of living increases, humanity co-opts a growing share of the planet's natural resources resulting in many well-known environmental trade-offs. In this study, we explored the impact of agriculture on a resource fundamental to life on Earth: terrestrial vegetation growth (net primary production; NPP). We...
Effects of soil temperature and depth to ground water on first-year growth of a dryland riparian phreatophyte, Glycyrrhiza lepidota (American licorice)
Douglas C. Andersen, S. Mark Nelson
2014, Southwestern Naturalist (59) 56-65
We investigated the effects of soil temperature and depth to ground water on first-year growth of a facultative floodplain phreatophyte, Glycyrrhiza lepidota, in a 2-×-2 factorial greenhouse experiment. We grew plants in mesocosms subirrigated with water low in dissolved oxygen, mimicking natural systems, and set depth of ground water at 63...
Early to Middle Ordovician back-arc basin in the southern Appalachian Blue Ridge: characteristics, extent, and tectonic significance
James Tull, Christopher S. Holm-Denoma, Clinton I. Barineau
2014, GSA Bulletin (126) 990-1015
Fault-dismembered segments of a distinctive, extensive, highly allochthonous, and tectonically significant Ordovician (ca. 480–460 Ma) basin, which contains suites of bimodal metavolcanic rocks, associated base metal deposits, and thick immature deep-water (turbiditic) metasediments, occur in parts of the southern Appalachian Talladega belt, eastern Blue Ridge, and Inner Piedmont of Alabama,...
Optical sensors for water quality
Brian A. Pellerin, Brian A. Bergamaschi
2014, Lakeline 13-17
Shifts in land use, population, and climate have altered hydrologic systems in the United States in ways that affect water quality and ecosystem function. Water diversions, detention in reservoirs, increased channelization, and changes in rainfall and snowmelt are major causes, but there are also more subtle causes such as changes...
Benthic prey fish assessment, Lake Ontario 2013
Brian Weidel, Maureen Walsh, Michael J. Connerton
2014, NYSDEC Lake Ontario Annual Report 2013-12
The 2013 benthic fish assessment was delayed and shortened as a result of the U.S. Government shutdown, however the assessment collected 51 of the 62 planned bottom trawls. Over the past 34 years, Slimy Sculpin abundance in Lake Ontario has fluctuated, but ultimately decreased by two orders of magnitude, with...
Mercury bioaccumulation in Southern Appalachian birds, assessed through feather concentrations
Rebecca Hylton Keller, Lingtian Xie, David B. Buchwalter, Kathleen E. Franzreb, Theodore R. Simons
2014, Ecotoxicology (23) 304-316
Mercury contamination in wildlife has rarely been studied in the Southern Appalachians despite high deposition rates in the region. From 2006 to 2008 we sampled feathers from 458 birds representing 32 species in the Southern Appalachians for total mercury and stable isotope δ 15N. Mercury concentrations (mean ± SE) averaged 0.46 ± 0.02 μg g−1 (range 0.01–3.74 μg g−1). Twelve...
Detection of the emerging amphibian pathogens Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and ranavirus in Russia
Andrey N. Reshetnikov, Tara E. Chestnut, Jesse L. Brunner, Kaylene M. Charles, Emily E. Nebergall, Deanna H. Olson
2014, Diseases of Aquatic Organisms (110) 235-240
In a population of the European common toad Bufo bufo from a rural pond in the region of Lake Glubokoe Regional Reserve in Moscow province, Russia, unexplained mass mortality events involving larvae and metamorphs have been observed over a monitoring period of >20 yr. We tested toads from this and a nearby...
Double-crested Cormorant studies at Little Galloo Island, Lake Ontario in 2013: Diet composition, fish consumption and the efficacy of management activities in reducing fish predation
James H. Johnson, Russ D. McCullough, Irene Mazzocchi
2014, NYSDEC Lake Ontario Annual Report 2013-14
For almost two decades Little Galloo Island (LGI) has supported a large colony of Double-crested Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) in the eastern basin of Lake Ontario. Cormorant nest counts on the island since the early 1990's have averaged 4,297 per year. However, less than 2,000 pairs have nested on the island...
Fish depth distributions in the Lower Mississippi River
K. J. Killgore, Leandro E. Miranda
2014, River Research and Applications (30) 347-359
A substantial body of literature exists about depth distribution of fish in oceans, lakes and reservoirs, but less is known about fish depth distribution in large rivers. Most of the emphasis on fish distributions in rivers has focused on longitudinal and latitudinal spatial distributions. Knowledge on depth distribution is necessary...
Reservoir floodplains support distinct fish assemblages
Leandro E. Miranda, S. L. Wigen, Jonah D. Dagel
2014, River Research and Applications (30) 338-346
Reservoirs constructed on floodplain rivers are unique because the upper reaches of the impoundment may include extensive floodplain environments. Moreover, reservoirs that experience large periodic water level fluctuations as part of their operational objectives seasonally inundate and dewater floodplains in their upper reaches, partly mimicking natural inundations of river floodplains....
