Defining a data management strategy for USGS Chesapeake Bay studies
Cassandra Ladino
2013, Open-File Report 2013-1005
The mission of U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Chesapeake Bay studies is to provide integrated science for improved understanding and management of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. Collective USGS efforts in the Chesapeake Bay watershed began in the 1980s, and by the mid-1990s the USGS adopted the watershed as one of its...
Analysis of changes in water-level dynamics at selected sites in the Florida Everglades
Paul Conrads, Stephen T. Benedict
2013, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5286
The historical modification and regulation of the hydrologic patterns in the Florida Everglades have resulted in changes in the ecosystem of South Florida and the Florida Everglades. Since the 1970s, substantial focus has been given to the restoration of the Everglades ecosystem. The U.S. Geological Survey through its Greater Everglades...
Occurrence and persistence of fungicides in bed sediments and suspended solids from three targeted use areas in the United States
Kelly L. Smalling, Timothy J. Reilly, Mark W. Sandstrom, Kathryn Kuivila
2013, Science of the Total Environment (447) 179-185
To document the environmental occurrence and persistence of fungicides, a robust and sensitive analytical method was used to measure 34 fungicides and an additional 57 current-use pesticides in bed sediments and suspended solids collected from areas of intense fungicide use within three geographic areas across the United States. Sampling sites...
Hydrography change detection: the usefulness of surface channels derived From LiDAR DEMs for updating mapped hydrography
Sandra K. Poppenga, Dean B. Gesch, Bruce B. Worstell
2013, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (49) 371-389
The 1:24,000-scale high-resolution National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) mapped hydrography flow lines require regular updating because land surface conditions that affect surface channel drainage change over time. Historically, NHD flow lines were created by digitizing surface water information from aerial photography and paper maps. Using these same methods to update nationwide...
Partial least squares for efficient models of fecal indicator bacteria on Great Lakes beaches
Wesley R. Brooks, Michael N. Fienen, Steven R. Corsi
2013, Journal of Environmental Management (114) 470-475
At public beaches, it is now common to mitigate the impact of water-borne pathogens by posting a swimmer's advisory when the concentration of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) exceeds an action threshold. Since culturing the bacteria delays public notification when dangerous conditions exist, regression models are sometimes used to predict the...
Seafloor video footage and still-frame grabs from U.S. Geological Survey cruises in Hawaiian nearshore waters
Ann E. Gibbs, Susan A. Cochran, Peter W. Tierney
2013, Data Series 735
Underwater video footage was collected in nearshore waters (<60-meter depth) off the Hawaiian Islands from 2002 to 2011 as part of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program's Pacific Coral Reef Project, to improve seafloor characterization and for the development and ground-truthing of benthic-habitat maps. This report...
Deep subsurface drip irrigation using coal-bed sodic water: part II. geochemistry
Carleton R. Bern, George N. Breit, Richard W. Healy, John W. Zupancic
2013, Agricultural Water Management (118) 135-149
Waters with low salinity and high sodium adsorption ratios (SARs) present a challenge to irrigation because they degrade soil structure and infiltration capacity. In the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, such low salinity (electrical conductivity, EC 2.1 mS cm-1) and high-SAR (54) waters are co-produced with coal-bed methane and some...
Deep subsurface drip irrigation using coal-bed sodic water: part I. water and solute movement
Carleton R. Bern, George N. Breit, Richard W. Healy, John W. Zupancic, Richard Hammack
2013, Agricultural Water Management (118) 122-134
Water co-produced with coal-bed methane (CBM) in the semi-arid Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana commonly has relatively low salinity and high sodium adsorption ratios that can degrade soil permeability where used for irrigation. Nevertheless, a desire to derive beneficial use from the water and a need to dispose...
Modeling plant species distributions under future climates: how fine scale do climate projections need to be?
Janet Franklin, Frank W. Davis, Makihiko Ikegami, Alexandra D. Syphard, Lorraine E. Flint, Alan L. Flint, Lee Hannah
2013, Global Change Biology (19) 473-483
Recent studies suggest that species distribution models (SDMs) based on fine‐scale climate data may provide markedly different estimates of climate‐change impacts than coarse‐scale models. However, these studies disagree in their conclusions of how scale influences projected species distributions. In rugged terrain, coarse‐scale climate grids may not capture topographically controlled climate...
Environmental factors that influence cyanobacteria and geosmin occurrence in reservoirs
Celeste A. Journey, Karen M. Beaulieu, Paul M. Bradley
2013, Book chapter, Current perspectives in contaminant hydrology and water resources sustainability
Phytoplankton are small to microscopic, free-floating algae that inhabit the open water of freshwater, estuarine, and saltwater systems. In freshwater lake and reservoirs systems, which are the focus of this chapter, phytoplankton communities commonly consist of assemblages of the major taxonomic groups, including green algae, diatoms, dinoflagellates, and cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria...
Preliminary stratigraphy and facies analysis of the Upper Cretaceous Kaguyak Formation, including a brief summary of newly discovered oil stain, upper Alaska Peninsula
Marwan A. Wartes, Paul L. Decker, Richard G. Stanley, Trystan M. Herriott, Kenneth P. Helmold, Robert J. Gillis
2013, Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys Preliminary Interpretive Report 2013-1F
The Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys has an ongoing program aimed at evaluating the Mesozoic forearc stratigraphy, structure, and petroleum systems of lower Cook Inlet. Most of our field studies have focused on the Jurassic component of the petroleum system[this report.] However, in late July and early August...
Integration of bed characteristics, geochemical tracers, current measurements, and numerical modeling for assessing the provenance of beach sand in the San Francisco Bay Coastal System
Patrick L. Barnard, Amy C. Foxgrover, Edwin P.L. Elias, Li H. Erikson, James R. Hein, Mary McGann, Kira Mizell, Robert J. Rosenbauer, Peter W. Swarzenski, Renee K. Takesue, Florence L. Wong, Don Woodrow
2013, Marine Geology (345) 181-206
Over 150 million m3 of sand-sized sediment has disappeared from the central region of the San Francisco Bay Coastal System during the last half century. This enormous loss may reflect numerous anthropogenic influences, such as watershed damming, bay-fill development, aggregate mining, and dredging. The reduction in Bay sediment also appears to be...
Volatile fluxes through the Big Bend section of the San Andreas Fault, California: helium and carbon-dioxide systematics
Justin T. Kulongoski, David R. Hilton, Peter H. Barry, Bradley K. Esser, Darren Hillegonds, Kenneth Belitz
2013, Chemical Geology (339) 92-102
To investigate the source of volatiles and their relationship to the San Andreas Fault System (SAFS), 18 groundwater samples were collected from wells near the Big Bend section of the SAFS in southern California and analyzed for helium and carbon abundance and isotopes. Concentrations of 4He, corrected for air-bubble entrainment,...
You're standing on it! Coal-tar-based pavement sealcoat and environmental and human health
Barbara Mahler, Peter C. Van Metre
2013, APWA Reporter 64-66
Coal-tar-based sealcoat—a product marketed to protect and beautify asphalt pavement—is a potent source of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) to air, soils, streams and lakes, and homes. Does its use present a risk to human health? Results from a new study by researchers from Baylor University and the...
The utility of atmospheric analyses for the mitigation of artifacts in InSAR
James Foster, John Kealy, Tiziana Cherubini, S. Businger, Zhong Lu, Michael Murphy
2013, Journal of Geophysical Research B: Solid Earth (118) 748-758
The numerical weather models (NWMs) developed by the meteorological community are able to provide accurate analyses of the current state of the atmosphere in addition to the predictions of the future state. To date, most attempts to apply the NWMs to estimate the refractivity of the atmosphere at the time...
Mapping river bathymetry with a small footprint green LiDAR: Applications and challenges
Paul J. Kinzel, Carl J. Legleiter, Jonathan M. Nelson
2013, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (49) 183-204
Airborne bathymetric Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) systems designed for coastal and marine surveys are increasingly sought after for high-resolution mapping of fluvial systems. To evaluate the potential utility of bathymetric LiDAR for applications of this kind, we compared detailed surveys collected using wading and sonar techniques with measurements from...
Crowdsourcing to Acquire Hydrologic Data and Engage Citizen Scientists: CrowdHydrology
Michael N. Fienen, Chris Lowry
2013, Ground Water (51) 151-156
Spatially and temporally distributed measurements of processes, such as baseflow at the watershed scale, come at substantial equipment and personnel cost. Research presented here focuses on building a crowdsourced database of inexpensive distributed stream stage measurements. Signs on staff gauges encourage citizen scientists to voluntarily send hydrologic measurements (e.g., stream...
Rapid runoff via shallow throughflow and deeper preferential flow in a boreal catchment underlain by frozen silt (Alaska, USA)
Joshua C. Koch, Stephanie A. Ewing, Robert G. Striegl, Diane M. McKnight
2013, Hydrogeology Journal (21) 93-106
In high-latitude catchments where permafrost is present, runoff dynamics are complicated by seasonal active-layer thaw, which may cause a change in the dominant flowpaths as water increasingly contacts mineral soils of low hydraulic conductivity. A 2-year study, conducted in an upland catchment in Alaska (USA) underlain by frozen, well-sorted eolian...
Effects of drought on birds and riparian vegetation in the Colorado River Delta, Mexico
Osvel Hinojosa-Huerta, Pamela L. Nagler, Yamilett K. Carrillo-Guererro, Edward P. Glenn
2013, Ecological Engineering (51) 275-281
The riparian corridor in the delta of the Colorado River in Mexico supports internationally important bird habitat. The vegetation is maintained by surface flows from the U.S. and Mexico and by a high, non-saline aquifer into which the dominant phreatophytic shrubs and trees are rooted. We studied the effects of...
Frequency and Severity of Trauma in Fishes Subjected to Multiple-pass Depletion Electrofishing
Frank Panek, Christine L. Densmore
2013, North American Journal of Fisheries Management (33) 178-185
The incidence and severity of trauma associated with multiple-pass electrofishing and the effects on short-term (30-d) survival and growth of Rainbow Trout Oncorhynchus mykiss, Brook Trout Salvelinus fontinalis, and five representative co-inhabiting nontarget or bycatch species were examined. Fish were held in four rectangular fiberglass tanks (190 × 66 cm)...
Use of classification trees to apportion single echo detections to species: Application to the pelagic fish community of Lake Superior
Daniel L. Yule, Jean V. Adams, Thomas R. Hrabik, Mark R. Vinson, Zebadiah Woiak, Tyler D. Ahrenstroff
2013, Fisheries Research (140) 123-132
Acoustic methods are used to estimate the density of pelagic fish in large lakes with results of midwater trawling used to assign species composition. Apportionment in lakes having mixed species can be challenging because only a small fraction of the water sampled acoustically is sampled with trawl gear. Here we...
Site Response and Basin Waves in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California
Jon Peter B. Fletcher, John Boatwright
2013, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (103) 196-210
The Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta is an inland delta at the western extent of the Central Valley. Levees were built around swampy islands starting after the Civil War to reclaim these lands for farming. Various studies show that these levees could fail in concert from shaking from a major local or...
Biodiversity losses and conservation trade-offs: Assessing future urban growth scenarios for a North American trade corridor
Miguel L. Villarreal, Laura M. Norman, Cynthia S.A. Wallace, Kenneth G. Boykin
2013, International Journal of Biodiversity Science, Ecosystem Services and Management (9) 90-103
The Sonoran Desert and Apache Highlands ecoregions of North America are areas of exceptionally high plant and vertebrate biodiversity. However, much of the vertebrate biodiversity is supported by only a few vegetation types with limited distributions, some of which are increasingly threatened by changing land uses. We assessed the impacts...
Using isotopes of dissolved inorganic carbon species and water to separate sources of recharge in a cave spring, northwestern Arkansas, USA Blowing Spring Cave
Katherine J. Knierim, Erik Pollock, Phillip D. Hays
2013, Acta Carsologica (42) 261-276
Blowing Spring Cave in northwestern Arkansas is representative of cave systems in the karst of the Ozark Plateaus, and stable isotopes of water (δ18O and δ2H) and inorganic carbon (δ13C) were used to quantify soil-water, bedrock-matrix water, and precipitation contributions to cave-spring flow during storm events to understand controls on...
Water quality, streamflow conditions, and annual flow-duration curves for streams of the San Juan–Chama Project, southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, 1935-2010
Sarah E. Falk, Scott K. Anderholm, Katya A. Hafich
2013, Scientific Investigations Report 2013-5005
The Albuquerque–Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority supplements the municipal water supply for the Albuquerque metropolitan area, in central New Mexico, with water diverted from the Rio Grande. Water diverted from the Rio Grande for municipal use is derived from the San Juan–Chama Project, which delivers water from streams in the...
