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Constraining the magnitude of past hydrological change may improve understanding and predictions of future shifts in water availability. Here we demonstrate that water-table depth, a sensitive indicator of hydroclimate, can be quantitatively reconstructed using Kr and Xe isotopes in groundwater. We present the first-ever measurements of these dissolved noble gas...

Worldwide, human activities have modified hydrology and nutrient loading regimes in coastal wetlands. Understanding the interplay between these drivers and subsequent response of wetland plant communities is essential to informing wetland management and restoration efforts. Recent restoration strategies in Louisiana proposes to use sediment diversions from the Mississippi River to...

The location of a point on the landscape within a stream network (hydrologic position) can be an important predictive measure in hydrology. Hydrologic position is defined here by two metrics: lateral position and distance from stream to divide, both measured horizontally. Lateral position (dimensionless) is the relative...

For over 125 years, the U.S. Geological Survey streamgage network has provided important hydrologic information about rivers and streams throughout the Nation. Traditional streamgage methods provide reliable stage and streamflow data but typically only monitor stage at a single location in a river and require frequent calibration streamflow measurements. Direct measurements are...

How is drought expressed in Hawai‘i & USAPI? Drought is a significant climate feature in Hawai‘i and the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI), at times causing severe impacts across multiple sectors. Below average precipitation anomalies are often accompanied by higher than average temperatures and reduced cloud cover. The resulting higher insolation...

The city of Sioux Falls, in southeastern South Dakota, is the largest city in South Dakota. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the city of Sioux Falls, completed a groundwater-flow model to use for improving the understanding of groundwater-flow processes, estimating hydrogeologic properties, and analyzing groundwater and surface-water...

Research has traditionally focused on atmospheric release of carbon from thawing permafrost, yet overlooked waterborne release pathways likely contribute significantly, especially in a warming Arctic. To address this knowledge gap and better constrain the fate of carbon in the North, we recommend inter-disciplinary efforts bridging physical, chemical and computational research....

Large-scale assessments of rangeland runoff and erosion require methods to extend plot-scale parameterizations to large areas. In this study, Rangeland Hydrology and Erosion Model (RHEM) parameters were developed from plot-scale foliar and ground-cover transect data for an arid, grass-shrub rangeland in southern New Mexico, and a method was assessed to...

The precise estimation of process effects in hydrological models requires applying models to large scales with extensive spatial variability in controlling factors. Despite progress in large‐scale applications of hydrological models in conterminous United States (CONUS) river basins, spatial constraints in model parameters have prevented the interbasin...

Circumpolar lakes comprise ~ 1.4 million km2 of arctic and subarctic landscapes and are vulnerable to change in vegetation, permafrost distribution, and hydrological conditions in response to climate warming. However, the composition and cycling of dissolved organic matter (DOM) is poorly understood for these lakes because most are remote...

Floodplain inundation poses both risks and benefits to society. In this study, we characterize floodplain inundation across the United States using 5800 stream gages. We find that between 4% and 12.6% of a river’s annual flow moves through its floodplains. Flood duration and magnitude is greater in...

Groundwater chemistry has been predominantly used in geochemical exploration studies to identify mineralized targets concealed under transported cover in areas with gentle topography. Another potentially valuable ap-plication that has received little attention is using groundwater chemistry to identify deposits concealed within mountain ridges. A number of geochemical exploration studies have...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, designed and operates a network of monitoring stations on streams and springs throughout Missouri known as the Ambient Water-Quality Monitoring Network. During water year 2018 (October 1, 2017, through September 30, 2018), water-quality data were collected at...

Streams are influenced by watershed-scale factors, such as climate, geology, topography, hydrology, and soils, which mostly vary naturally among sites, as well as human factors, agriculture and urban development. Thus, natural factors could complicate assessment of human disturbance. In the present study, we use structural equation modeling and data from...

Deposits of calcite coating the lower passages of Wind Cave in the southern Black Hills of South Dakota were precipitated under phreatic conditions. Data from samples associated with a new cave survey and hydrologic studies indicate that past water tables within Wind Cave reached a maximum height of 45 m...

The steadily rising global urban population has placed substantial strain on urban water quality, and this strain is projected to increase for the foreseeable future. Considerable attention has been given to the hydrological and physico-chemical effects of urbanization on stream ecosystems. However, due to the relative infancy of the field...

The U.S. Geological Survey Columbia Environmental Research Center performs research to solve challenging environmental problems related to contaminants and habitat alterations in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. The research is interdisciplinary and pursued through partnerships within the U.S. Geological Survey and with national, international, state, and local agencies; nongovernmental organizations; and...

A previously published field-experimental investigation showed that injection of nitrate in anoxic groundwater that contained aqueous and sediment-bound Fe(II) diminished concentrations of As(V) and As(III) to below drinking-water limits. In the current study, reactive transport modeling confirmed that the observed attenuation was consistent with oxidation of Fe(II) by nitrate, leading...

In view of the U.S. Army’s historical reliance and plans to increase demands on groundwater to supply its operations at Fort Irwin National Training Center (NTC), California, coupled with the continuing water-level declines in some developed groundwater basins as a result of pumping, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation...

Upward discharge to surface water bodies can be quantified using analytical models based on temperature-depth (T-z) profiles. The use of sediment T-z profiles is attractive as discharge estimates can be obtained using point-in-time data that are collected inexpensively and rapidly. Previous studies have identified that T-z methods can only be...

Paleohydrologic records can provide unique, long-term perspectives on streamflow variability and hydroclimate for use in water resource planning. Such long-term records can also play a key role in placing both present day events and projected future conditions into a broader context than that offered by instrumental observations. However,...

Automated data-processing methods allow hydrologists to efficiently incorporate digital well-record datasets into the construction of hydrostratigraphic frameworks for groundwater-flow models. The method selected to construct the hydrostratigraphic framework can affect the extent of geologic heterogeneity that can be included in the model. The detail generated from a hydrostratigraphic framework can...

The need for theories that address food web assembly and complexity over multiple spatial scales are critical to understanding their stability and persistence. In a meta-food web – an integrated network of local food webs – spatial heterogeneity in physical processes may have profound effects on food web function and...

The Upper Missouri River Headwaters Basin (36,400 km2) depends on its river corridors to support irrigated agriculture and world-class trout fisheries. We evaluated trends (1984-2016) in riparian wetness, an indicator of riparian condition, in peak irrigation months (June, July, August) for 158 km2 of riparian area across the basin using...

At a “clean air” trade winds site in northeastern Puerto Rico, we found an apparent paradox: atmospheric total mercury (THg) deposition was highest of any site in the USA Mercury Deposition Network, but assimilation into the local food web was quite low. Avian blood THg concentrations (n = 31, from eight species...