Geochemical and hydrologic data for San Marcos Springs recharge characterization near San Marcos, Texas, November 2008--December 2010
Cassi L. Crow
2012, Data Series 672
During 2008–10, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the San Antonio Water System, collected geochemical and hydrologic data in Bexar, Comal, and Hays Counties, Texas, to define and characterize the sources of recharge to San Marcos Springs. Precipitation samples were collected for stable isotope analysis at 1 site and...
Computing discharge using the index velocity method
Victor A. Levesque, Kevin A. Oberg
2012, Techniques and Methods 3-A23
Application of the index velocity method for computing continuous records of discharge has become increasingly common, especially since the introduction of low-cost acoustic Doppler velocity meters (ADVMs) in 1997. Presently (2011), the index velocity method is being used to compute discharge records for approximately 470 gaging stations operated and maintained...
Foraging ecology of least terns and piping plovers nesting on Central Platte River sandpits and sandbars
Mark H. Sherfy, Michael J. Anteau, Terry L. Shaffer, Marsha A. Sovada, Jennifer H. Stucker
2012, Open-File Report 2012-1059
Federally listed least terns (Sternula antillarum) and piping plovers (Charadrius melodus) nest on riverine sandbars on many major midcontinent river systems. On the Central Platte River, availability of sandbar habitat is limited, and both species nest on excavated sandpits in the river's floodplain. However, the extent to which sandpit-nesting birds...
Alaska Geochemical Database - Mineral Exploration Tool for the 21st Century - PDF of presentation
Matthew Granitto, Jeanine M. Schmidt, Keith A. Labay, Nora B. Shew, Bruce M. Gamble
2012, Open-File Report 2012-1060
The U.S. Geological Survey has created a geochemical database of geologic material samples collected in Alaska. This database is readily accessible to anyone with access to the Internet. Designed as a tool for mineral or environmental assessment, land management, or mineral exploration, the initial version of the Alaska Geochemical Database...
Status and understanding of groundwater quality in the Tahoe-Martis, Central Sierra, and Southern Sierra study units, 2006-2007--California GAMA Priority Basin Project
Miranda S. Fram, Kenneth Belitz
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2011-5216
Groundwater quality in the Tahoe-Martis, Central Sierra, and Southern Sierra study units was investigated as part of the Priority Basin Project of the California Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment (GAMA) Program. The three study units are located in the Sierra Nevada region of California in parts of Nevada, Placer, El...
The effect of swab sample choice on the detection of avian influenza in apparently healthy wild ducks
S. Ip, Robert J. Dusek, Dennis M. Heisey
2012, Avian Diseases (56) 114-119
Historically, avian influenza viruses have been isolated from cloacal swab specimens, but recent data suggest that the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus can be better detected from respiratory tract specimens. To better understand how swab sample type affects the detection ability of low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) viruses...
Bayesian shared frailty models for regional inference about wildlife survival
D.M. Heisey
2012, Animal Conservation (15) 127-128
One can joke that 'exciting statistics' is an oxymoron, but it is neither a joke nor an exaggeration to say that these are exciting times to be involved in statistical ecology. As Halstead et al.'s (2012) paper nicely exemplifies, recently developed Bayesian analyses can now be used to extract insights...
Seasonal use of shallow water habitat in the Lower Snake River reservoirs by juvenile fall Chinook salmon
Kenneth F. Tiffan, William P. Connor
2012, Report
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) is preparing a long term management plan for sediments that affect the authorized project purposes of the Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental, and Ice Harbor reservoirs (hereafter, the lower Snake River reservoirs), and the area from the mouth of the Snake River...
Geospatial database for regional environmental assessment of central Colorado.
Stan E. Church, Carma A. San Juan, David L. Fey, Travis S. Schmidt, Terry L. Klein, Ed H. DeWitt, Richard B. Wanty, Philip L. Verplanck, Katharine A. Mitchell, Monique G. Adams, LaDonna M. Choate, Todor I. Todorov, Barnaby W. Rockwell, Luke McEachron, Michael W. Anthony
2012, Data Series 614
In conjunction with the future planning needs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted a detailed environmental assessment of the effects of historical mining on Forest Service lands in central Colorado. Stream sediment, macroinvertebrate, and various filtered and unfiltered water quality samples were collected...
Determination of streamflow of the Arkansas River near Bentley in south-central Kansas
Charles A. Perry
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5059
The Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of Water Resources, requires that the streamflow of the Arkansas River just upstream from Bentley in south-central Kansas be measured or calculated before groundwater can be pumped from the well field. When the daily streamflow of the Arkansas River near Bentley is less than...
Advances in the simulation and automated measurement of well-sorted granular material: 1. Simulation
Daniel Buscombe, David M. Rubin
2012, Journal of Geophysical Research F: Earth Surface (117)
1. In this, the first of a pair of papers which address the simulation and automated measurement of well-sorted natural granular material, a method is presented for simulation of two-phase (solid, void) assemblages of discrete non-cohesive particles. The purpose is to have a flexible, yet computationally and theoretically simple, suite...
Assessing time-integrated dissolved concentrations and predicting toxicity of metals during diel cycling in streams
Laurie S. Balistrieri, David A. Nimick, Christopher A. Mebane
2012, Science of the Total Environment (425) 155-168
Evaluating water quality and the health of aquatic organisms is challenging in systems with systematic diel (24 hour) or less predictable runoff-induced changes in water composition. To advance our understanding of how to evaluate environmental health in these dynamic systems, field studies of diel cycling were conducted in two...
Dispersal of larval suckers at the Williamson River Delta, Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon, 2006-09
Tamara M. Wood, Heather A. Hendrixson, Douglas F. Markle, Charles S. Erdman, Summer M. Burdick, Craig M. Ellsworth, Norman L. Buccola
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5016
An advection/diffusion modeling approach was used to simulate the transport of larval suckers from spawning areas in the Williamson River, through the newly restored Williamson River Delta, to Upper Klamath Lake. The density simulations spanned the years of phased restoration, from 2006/2007 prior to any levee breaching, to 2008 when...
Spatially explicit land-use and land-cover scenarios for the Great Plains of the United States
Terry L. Sohl, Benjamin M. Sleeter, Kristi L. Sayler, Michelle A. Bouchard, Ryan R. Reker, Stacie L. Bennett, Rachel R. Sleeter, Ronald L. Kanengieter, Zhi-Liang Zhu
2012, Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment (153) 1-15
The Great Plains of the United States has undergone extensive land-use and land-cover change in the past 150 years, with much of the once vast native grasslands and wetlands converted to agricultural crops, and much of the unbroken prairie now heavily grazed. Future land-use change in the region could have...
Linking urbanization to the Biological Condition Gradient (BCG) for stream ecosystems in the Northeastern United States using a Bayesian network approach
Roxolana Kashuba, Gerard McMahon, Thomas F. Cuffney, Song Qian, Kenneth Reckhow, Jeroen Gerritsen, Susan Davies
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5030
Urban development alters important physical, chemical, and biological processes that define urban stream ecosystems. An approach was developed for quantifying the effects of these processes on aquatic biota, and then linking those effects to endpoints that can be used for environmental management. These complex, interacting systems are challenging to model...
Archive of single beam and swath bathymetry data collected nearshore of the Gulf Islands National Seashore, Mississippi, from West Ship Island, Mississippi, to Dauphin Island, Alabama: Methods and data report for USGS Cruises 08CCT01 and 08CCT02, July 2008, and 09CCT03 and 09CCT04, June 2009
Nancy T. DeWitt, James G. Flocks, Elizabeth A. Pendleton, Mark E. Hansen, B.J. Reynolds, Kyle W. Kelso, Dana S. Wiese, Charles R. Worley
2012, Data Series 675
During the summers of 2008 and 2009 the USGS conducted bathymetric surveys from West Ship Island, Miss., to Dauphin Island, Ala., as part of the Northern Gulf of Mexico (NGOM) Ecosystem Change and Hazard Susceptibility project. The survey area extended from the shoreline out to approximately 2 kilometers and...
Simulation of streamflows and basin-wide hydrologic variables over several climate-change scenarios, Methow River basin, Washington
Frank D. Voss, Mark C. Mastin
2012, Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5031
The purpose of this project was to demonstrate the capabilities of an existing watershed model and downscaling procedures to provide simulated hydrological data over various greenhouse gas emission scenarios for use in the Methow River framework prototype. An existing watershed model was used to simulate daily time series of streamflow...
Geologic framework for the national assessment of carbon dioxide storage resources: Bighorn Basin, Wyoming and Montana: Chapter A in Geologic framework for the national assessment of carbon dioxide storage resources
Jacob A. Covault, Mark L. Buursink, William H. Craddock, Matthew D. Merrill, Madalyn S. Blondes, Mayur A. Gosai, P.A. Freeman
Peter D. Warwick, M.D. Corum, editor(s)
2012, Open-File Report 2012-1024-A
The 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (Public Law 110–140) directs the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to conduct a national assessment of potential geologic storage resources for carbon dioxide (CO2). The methodology used for the national CO2 assessment follows that of previous USGS work. The methodology is non-economic and intended...
Determination of the δ13C of dissolved inorganic carbon in water; RSIL lab code 1710
Glenda L. Singleton, Kinga Revesz, Tyler B. Coplen
2012, Techniques and Methods 10-c18
The purpose of the Reston Stable Isotope Laboratory (RSIL) lab code 1710 is to present a method to determine the δ13C of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) of water. The DIC of water is precipitated using ammoniacal strontium chloride (SrCl2) solution to form strontium carbonate (SrCO3). The δ13C is analyzed by...
VARBOOT: A spatial bootstrap program for semivariogram uncertainty assessment
Eulogio Pardo-Iguzquiza, Ricardo A. Olea
2012, Computers & Geosciences (41) 188-198
In applied geostatistics, the semivariogram is commonly estimated from experimental data, producing an empirical semivariogram for a specified number of discrete lags. In a second stage, a model defined by a few parameters is fitted to the empirical semivariogram. As the experimental data are usually few and sparsely located, there...
Estimating survival rates with time series of standing age‐structure data
Mark S. Udevitz, Peter J. Gogan
2012, Ecology (93) 726-732
It has long been recognized that age‐structure data contain useful information for assessing the status and dynamics of wildlife populations. For example, age‐specific survival rates can be estimated with just a single sample from the age distribution of a stable, stationary population. For a population that is...
Identification of metapopulation dynamics among Northern Goshawks of the Alexander Archipelago, Alaska, and Coastal British Columbia
Sarah A. Sonsthagen, Erica L. McClaren, Frank I. Doyle, K. Titus, George K. Sage, Robert E. Wilson, Judy R. Gust, Sandra L. Talbot
2012, Conservation Genetics (13) 1045-1057
Northern Goshawks occupying the Alexander Archipelago, Alaska, and coastal British Columbia nest primarily in old-growth and mature forest, which results in spatial heterogeneity in the distribution of individuals across the landscape. We used microsatellite and mitochondrial data to infer genetic structure, gene flow, and fluctuations in population demography through evolutionary...
Using pad‐stripped acausally filtered strong‐motion data
David Boore, Aida Azari Sisi, Sinan Akkar
2012, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (102) 751-760
Most strong‐motion data processing involves acausal low‐cut filtering, which requires the addition of sometimes lengthy zero pads to the data. These padded sections are commonly removed by organizations supplying data, but this can lead to incompatibilities in measures of ground motion derived in the usual way from the padded and...
Assessing the potential hydrological impact of the Gibe III Dam on Lake Turkana water level using multi-source satellite data
Naga Manohar Velpuri, Gabriel B. Senay
2012, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions (16) 3561-3578
Lake Turkana, the largest desert lake in the world, is fed by ungauged or poorly gauged river systems. To meet the demand of electricity in the East African region, Ethiopia is currently building the Gibe III hydroelectric dam on the Omo River, which supplies more than 80% of the inflows...
Demographic population model for American shad: will access to additional habitat upstream of dams increase population sizes?
Julianne E. Harris, Joseph E. Hightower
2012, Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science (4) 262-283
American shad Alosa sapidissima are in decline in their native range, and modeling possible management scenarios could help guide their restoration. We developed a density-dependent, deterministic, stage-based matrix model to predict the population-level results of transporting American shad to suitable spawning habitat upstream of dams on the Roanoke River, North Carolina and...
