Major and trace element geochemistry and background concentrations for soils in Connecticut
Craig J. Brown, Margaret A. Thomas
2014, Northeastern Geoscience (32) 1-37
Soil samples were collected throughout Connecticut (CT) to determine the relationship of soil chemistry with the underlying geology and to better understand background concentrations of major and trace elements in soils. Soil samples were collected (1) from the upper 5 cm of surficial soil at 100 sites, (2) from the...
Earthquake mechanism and seafloor deformation for tsunami generation
Eric L. Geist, David D. Oglesby
Michael Beer, Ioannis A. Kougioumtzoglou, Edoardo Patelli, Ivan Siu-Kui Au, editor(s)
2014, Book chapter, Encyclopedia of earthquake engineering
Tsunamis are generated in the ocean by rapidly displacing the entire water column over a significant area. The potential energy resulting from this disturbance is balanced with the kinetic energy of the waves during propagation. Only a handful of submarine geologic phenomena can generate tsunamis: large-magnitude earthquakes, large landslides, and...
Tsunami-generated sediment wave channels at Lake Tahoe, California-Nevada, USA
James G. Moore, Richard A. Schweickert, Christopher A. Kitts
2014, Geosphere (10) 757-768
A gigantic ∼12 km3 landslide detached from the west wall of Lake Tahoe (California-Nevada, USA), and slid 15 km east across the lake. The splash, or tsunami, from this landslide eroded Tioga-age moraines dated as 21 ka. Lake-bottom short piston cores recovered sediment as old as 12 ka that did not...
Hydroclimatic regimes: a distributed water-balance framework for hydrologic assessment, classification, and management
Peter K. Weiskel, David M. Wolock, Phillip J. Zarriello, Richard M. Vogel, Sara B. Levin, Robert M. Lent
2014, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (18) 3855-3872
Runoff-based indicators of terrestrial water availability are appropriate for humid regions, but have tended to limit our basic hydrologic understanding of drylands – the dry-subhumid, semiarid, and arid regions which presently cover nearly half of the global land surface. In response, we introduce an indicator framework that gives equal weight...
2013 status of the Lake Ontario lower trophic levels
Kristen T. Holeck, Lars G. Rudstam, Christopher Hotaling, Russ D. McCullough, Dave Lemon, Web Pearsall, Jana R. Lantry, Michael J. Connerton, Steve LaPan, Betsy Trometer, Brian F. Lantry, Maureen Walsh, Brian Weidel
2014, NYSDEC Lake Ontario Annual Report 2013-16
Phosphorus showed high variation across nearshore (10 m depth) sites but was more stable at offshore (20 m and deeper) stations. In June and July, sites at the mouth of the Niagara River and at Oak Orchard had high phosphorus concentrations (20 – 46 μg/L). Epilimnetic average April-Oct total phosphorus...
Source, conveyance and fate of suspended sediments following Hurricane Irene. New England, USA
Brian Yellen, Jon D. Woodruff, Laura N. Kratz, Steven B. Mabee, Jonathan Morrison, Anna M. Martini
2014, Geomorphology (226) 124-134
Hurricane Irene passed directly over the Connecticut River valley in late August, 2011. Intense precipitation and high antecedent soil moisture resulted in record flooding, mass wasting and fluvial erosion, allowing for observations of how these rare but significant extreme events affect a landscape still responding to Pleistocene glaciation and associated...
Fertilizer consumption and energy input for 16 crops in the United States
Sheila E. Amenumey, Paul D. Capel
2014, Natural Resources Research (23) 299-309
Fertilizer use by U.S. agriculture has increased over the past few decades. The production and transportation of fertilizers (nitrogen, N; phosphorus, P; potassium, K) are energy intensive. In general, about a third of the total energy input to crop production goes to the production of fertilizers, one-third to mechanization, and...
Application of hydrologic tools and monitoring to support managed aquifer recharge decision making in the Upper San Pedro River, Arizona, USA
Laurel J. Lacher, Dale S. Turner, Bruce Gungle, Brooke M. Bushman, Holly E. Richter
2014, Water (6) 3495-3527
The San Pedro River originates in Sonora, Mexico, and flows north through Arizona, USA, to its confluence with the Gila River. The 92-km Upper San Pedro River is characterized by interrupted perennial flow, and serves as a vital wildlife corridor through this semiarid to arid region. Over the past century,...
Restoration of Rio Grande cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarkii virginalis to the Mescalero Apache Reservation
Bradley W. Kalb, Colleen A. Caldwell
2014, Cooperator Science Series FWS/CSS-111-2014
Rio Grande Cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarkii virginalis (RGCT) represents the most southern subspecies of cutthroat trout, endemic to Rio Grande, Canadian, and Pecos basins of New Mexico and southern Colorado. The subspecies currently occupies less than 12% of its historic range. The Mescalero Apache Tribe has partnered with U.S. Geological...
Assessment of lesser prairie-chicken use of wildlife water guzzlers
Clint W. Boal, Philip K. Borsdorf, Trevor S. Gicklhorn
2014, Bulletin of the Texas Ornithological Society (46) 10-18
Man-made water sources have been used as a management tool for wildlife, especially in arid regions, but the value of these water sources for wildlife populations is not well understood. In particular, the value of water as a conservation tool for Lesser Prairie-Chickens (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) is unknown. However, this is...
Effects of tillage and application rate on atrazine transport to subsurface drainage: Evaluation of RZWQM using a six-year field study
Robert W. Malone, Bernard T. Nolan, Liwang Ma, Rameshwar S. Kanwar, Carl H. Pederson, Philip Heilman
2014, Agricultural Water Management (132) 10-22
Well tested agricultural system models can improve our understanding of the water quality effects of management practices under different conditions. The Root Zone Water Quality Model (RZWQM) has been tested under a variety of conditions. However, the current model's ability to simulate pesticide transport to subsurface drain flow over a...
Groundwater conditions in Utah, spring of 2014
Carole B. Burden
2014, Cooperative Investigations Report 55
This is the fifty-first in a series of annual reports that describe groundwater conditions in Utah. Reports in this series, published cooperatively by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Utah Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water Rights, and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Water Quality, provide...
Hydrologic alteration affects aquatic plant assemblages in an arid-land river
Mark R. Vinson, Bennett Hestmark, Mary E. Barkworth
2014, Southwestern Naturalist (59) 480-488
We evaluated the effects of long-term flow alteration on primary-producer assemblages. In 1962, Flaming Gorge Dam was constructed on the Green River. The Yampa River has remained an unregulated hydrologically variable river that joins the Green River 100 km downstream from Flaming Gorge Dam. In the 1960s before dam construction...
Distribution and habitat associations of juvenile Common Snook in the lower Rio Grande, Texas
Caleb G. Huber, Timothy B. Grabowski, Reynaldo Patino, Kevin L. Pope
2014, Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science (6) 170-180
Common Snook Centropomus undecimalis were once abundant off the Texas coast, but these populations are now characterized by low abundance and erratic recruitment. Most research concerning Common Snook in North America has been conducted in Florida and very little is known about the specific biology and habitat needs of Common Snook in...
Continuous water-quality and suspended-sediment transport monitoring in the San Francisco Bay, California, water years 2011–13
Paul A. Buchanan, Maureen A. Downing-Kunz, David H. Schoellhamer, Gregory Shellenbarger, Kurt Weidich
2014, Fact Sheet 2014-3090
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) monitors water quality and suspended-sediment transport in the San Francisco Bay. The San Francisco Bay area is home to millions of people, and the bay teems with both resident and migratory wildlife, plants, and fish. Fresh water mixes with salt water in the bay, which...
Modeling the hydrogeophysical response of lake talik evolution
Burke J. Minsley, Tristan Wellman, Michelle Ann Walvoord, Andre Revil
2014, Conference Paper, SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts 2014
Geophysical methods provide valuable information about subsurface permafrost and its relation to dynamic hydrologic systems. Airborne electromagnetic data from interior Alaska are used to map the distribution of permafrost, geological features, surface water, and groundwater. To validate and gain further insight into these field datasets, we also explore the geophysical...
Predicting Impacts of tropical cyclones and sea-Level rise on beach mouse habitat
Q. Chen, Hongqing Wang, Lixia Wang, Robert Tawes, Drew Rollman
2014, Journal of Coastal Research (68) 12-19
Alabama beach mouse (ABM) (Peromyscus polionotus ammobates) is an important component of the coastal dune ecosystem along the Gulf of Mexico. Due to habitat loss and degradation, ABM is federally listed as an endangered species. In this study, we examined the impacts of storm surge and wind waves, which are...
Assessing distribution of migratory fishes and connectivity following complete and partial dam removals in a North Carolina River
Joshua K. Raabe, Joseph E. Hightower
2014, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (34) 955-969
Fish, especially migratory species, are assumed to benefit from dam removals that restore connectivity and access to upstream habitat, but few studies have evaluated this assumption. Therefore, we assessed the movement of migratory fishes in the springs of 2008 through 2010 and surveyed available habitat in the Little River, North...
An ecological response model for the Cache la Poudre River through Fort Collins
Jennifer Shanahan, Daniel Baker, Brian P. Bledsoe, LeRoy Poff, David M. Merritt, Kevin R. Bestgen, Gregor T. Auble, Boris C. Kondratieff, John Stokes, Mark Lorie, John Sanderson
2014, Report
The Poudre River Ecological Response Model (ERM) is a collaborative effort initiated by the City of Fort Collins and a team of nine river scientists to provide the City with a tool to improve its understanding of the past, present, and likely future conditions of the Cache la Poudre River...
Mount Rainier National Park
Robert Hoffman, Andrea Woodward, Patricia K. Haggerty, Kurt J. Jenkins, Paul C. Griffin, M. J. Adams, Joan Hagar, Tonnie Cummings, Dan Duriscoe, Karen Kopper, Jon Riedel, Barbara Samora, Lelaina Marin, Guillaume S. Mauger, Karen Bumbaco, Jeremy S. Littell
2014, Report
Natural Resource Condition Assessments (NRCAs) evaluate current conditions for a subset of natural resources and resource indicators in national parks. NRCAs also report on trends in resource condition (when possible), identify critical data gaps, and characterize a general level of confidence for study findings. The resources and indicators emphasized in...
Hillslope-scale experiment demonstrates role of convergence during two-step saturation
A. I. Gevaert, A. J. Teuling, R. Uijlenhoet, Stephen B. DeLong, T. E. Huxman, L. A. Pangle, David D. Breshears, J. Chorover, John D. Pelletier, S. R. Saleska, X. Zeng, Peter A. Troch
2014, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (18) 3681-1692
Subsurface flow and storage dynamics at hillslope scale are difficult to ascertain, often in part due to a lack of sufficient high-resolution measurements and an incomplete understanding of boundary conditions, soil properties, and other environmental aspects. A continuous and extreme rainfall experiment on an artificial hillslope at Biosphere 2's Landscape...
Productivity of functional guilds of fishes in managed wetlands in coastal South Carolina
Kelly F. Robinson, Cecil A. Jennings
2014, Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management (5) 70-86
In coastal South Carolina, many wetlands are impounded and managed as migratory waterfowl habitat. Impoundment effects on fish production and habitat quality largely are unknown. We used the size-frequency method to estimate summer production of fish guilds in three impoundments along the Combahee River, South Carolina. We predicted that guild-specific...
Spawning behavior in Atlantic cod: analysis by use of data storage tags
Timothy B. Grabowski, Vilhjalmur Thorsteinsson, Gudrun Marteinsdottir
2014, Marine Ecology Progress Series (506) 279-290
Electronic data storage tags (DSTs) were implanted into Atlantic cod captured in Icelandic waters from 2002 to 2007 and the depth profiles recovered from these tags (females: n = 31, males: n = 27) were used to identify patterns consistent with published descriptions of cod courtship and spawning behavior. The individual...
2011 Summary: Coastal wetland restoration research
Kurt P. Kowalski, Michael J. Wiley, Douglas A. Wilcox, Martha L. Carlson Mazur, Alex Czayka, Andrea Dominguez, Susan Doty, Mike Eggleston, Sean Green, Amanda Sweetman
2014, Report
The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) projects currently taking place in Great Lakes coastal wetlands provide a unique opportunity to study ecosystem response to management actions as practitioners strive to improve wetland function and increase ecosystem services. Through a partnership between the U.S. Geological Survey – Great Lakes Science Center...
Stream water temperature limits occupancy of salamanders in mid-Atlantic protected areas
Evan H. Campbell Grant, Amber N. M. Wiewel, Karen C. Rice
2014, Journal of Herpetology (48) 45-50
Stream ecosystems are particularly sensitive to urbanization, and tolerance of water-quality parameters is likely important to population persistence of stream salamanders. Forecasted climate and landscape changes may lead to significant changes in stream flow, chemical composition, and temperatures in coming decades. Protected areas where landscape alterations are minimized will therefore...
