Potential interaction of groundwater and surface water including autonomous underwater vehicle reconnaissance at Nolin River Lake, Kentucky, 2016
Angela S. Crain, Justin A. Boldt, Randall E. Bayless, Aubrey R. Bunch, Jade L. Young, Jennifer C. Thomason, Zachary L. Wolf
2019, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5075
The U.S. Geological Survey collaborated with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville District, on a synoptic study of water quality at Nolin River Lake during August 2016. The purpose of the study was to develop a better understanding of the potential for interaction between groundwater and surface water at...
Interactive effects of food supplementation and snake fungal disease on pregnant Pygmy Rattlesnakes and their offspring
Craig M. Lind, Amber Clark, Sarah A Smiley-Walters, Daniel Taylor, Marcos Isidoro Ayza, Jeffrey M. Lorch, Terence M. Farrell
2019, Journal of Herpetology (53) 282-288
In viviparous organisms, the ability to feed while pregnant may mitigate energetic trade-offs experienced during the reproductive process and enhance fecundity. However, anorexia during pregnancy has been reported in many crotaline snakes. The potential costs and benefits of feeding while pregnant are not completely described in the literature, and experimental...
Prediction and inference of flow-duration curves using multi-output neural networks
Scott C. Worland, Scott Steinschneider, William H. Asquith, Rodney Knight, Michael E. Wieczorek
2019, Water Resources Research (55) 6850-6868
We develop multi-output neural network models (MNNs) to predict flow-duration curves (FDCs) in 9,203 ungaged locations in the Southeastern United States for six decades between 1950-2009. The model architecture contains multiple response variables in the output layer that correspond to individual quantiles along the FDC. During training, predictions are made...
Applying the ecology of aquatic–terrestrial linkages to freshwater and riparian management
Johanna M. Kraus
2019, Freshwater Science (38) 917-918
Global stressors such as climate change, invasive species, urbanization, agricultural practices, and pollution can alter aquatic resource subsidies to terrestrial consumers. The effects of these stressors on timing, quality, and quantity of aquatic subsidies, such as adult aquatic insects, to birds, herpetofauna, and mammals, have large implications for wildlife management...
A multidisciplinary coastal vulnerability assessment for local government focused on ecosystems, Santa Barbara area, California
Monique Myers, Patrick L. Barnard, Edward Beighley, Daniel R. Cayan, Jenifer E. Dugan, Dongmei Feng, Samuel F. Iacobellis, John M. Melack, Henry M. Page
2019, Ocean and Coastal Management (182)
Incorporating coastal ecosystems in climate adaptation planning is needed to maintain the well-being of both natural and human systems. Our vulnerability study uses a multidisciplinary approach to evaluate climate change vulnerability of an urbanized coastal community that could serve as a model approach for communities worldwide, particularly in similar Mediterranean...
A spatio-contextual probabilistic model for extracting linear features in hilly terrain from high-resolution DEM data
Xiran Zhou, Wenwen Li, Samantha T. Arundel
2019, International Journal of Geographical Information Science (33) 666-686
This paper introduces our research in developing a probabilistic model to extract linear terrain features from high resolution DEM (Digital Elevation Model) data. The proposed model takes full advantage of spatio-contextual information to characterize terrain changes. It first derives a quantifiable measure of spatio-contextual patterns of linear terrain feature, such...
Modeling sediment bypassing around idealized rocky headlands
Douglas A. George, John L. Largier, Greg B. Pasternack, Patrick L. Barnard, Curt D. Storlazzi, Li H. Erikson
2019, Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (7)
Alongshore sediment bypassing rocky headlands remains understudied despite the importance of characterizing littoral processes for erosion abatement, beach management, and climate change adaptation. To address this gap, a numerical model sediment transport study was developed to identify controlling factors and mechanisms for sediment headland bypassing potential. Four idealized headlands were...
Regionalization of groundwater residence time using metamodeling
J. Jeffrey Starn, Kenneth Belitz
2019, Water Resources Research (54) 6357-6373
Groundwater residence-time distributions (RTDs) are critical for assessing susceptibility of water resources to degradation. A novel combination of numerical modeling and statistical methods allows estimation of regional RTDs with unprecedented speed. In this method, particle RTDs are generated in 30 type locales in the northeastern glaciated U.S using automated...
Controls on petroleum resources for the Devonian Marcellus Shale in the Appalachian Basin Province, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York
D.K. Higley, Catherine B. Enomoto, Heidi M. Leathers-Miller
2019, Mountain Geologist (56) 323-364
Greater than 33 trillion cubic feet of gas, 68 million barrels of natural gas liquids (NGL), and 192 million barrels of water have been produced from the Middle Devonian Marcellus Shale of the Hamilton Group in the Appalachian Basin. These volumes are from more than 11,700 non-commingled wells. Areas of...
Effects of ocean climate on the length and condition of forage fish in the Gulf of Alaska
Sarah Ann Thompson, Marisol Garcia-Reyes, William Sydeman, Mayumi L. Arimitsu, Scott Hatch, John F. Piatt
2019, Fisheries Oceanography (28) 658-671
Climatic drivers of the size and body condition of forage fish in the North Pacific are poorly known. We hypothesized that length and condition of forage fish in the Gulf of Alaska (GoA) should vary in relation to ocean temperature on multiple scales. To test this...
In vitro immune function in laboratory-reared age-0 smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieu) relative to diet
Christopher Ottinger, Cheyenne R. Smith, Vicki S. Blazer
2019, Fish & Shellfish Immunology (95) 1-10
Smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieu) are used as an indicator species in environmental monitoring and assessment studies. However, laboratory-based studies for methods development and effector assessment are limited for this species. Nutrition, a known modulator of teleost physiological responses including immune function, is a critical knowledge-gap sometimes overlooked in the design...
Landscape genetics reveals unique and shared effects of urbanization for two sympatric pool-breeding amphibians
Jared J. Homola, Cynthia S. Loftin, Michael T. Kinnison
2019, Ecology and Evolution (9) 11799-11823
Metapopulation-structured species can be negatively affected when landscape fragmentation impairs connectivity. We investigated the effects of urbanization on genetic diversity and gene flow for two sympatric amphibian species, spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) and wood frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus), across a large (>35,000 km2) landscape in Maine, USA, containing numerous natural and...
Anthropogenic and geologic causes of anomalously high uranium concentrations in groundwater used for drinking water supply in the southeastern San Joaquin Valley, CA
Michael R. Rosen, Karen R. Burow, Miranda Fram
2019, Journal of Hydrology (577) 1-14
Concentrations of uranium (U) >30 µg/L in groundwater are relatively uncommon in drinking water in the United States but can be of concern in those areas where complex interactions of aquifer materials and anthropogenic alterations of the natural flow regime mobilize uranium. High concentrations (>30 µg/L) of U in...
Burial history reconstruction of the Appalachian Basin in Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, using 1D petroleum system models
Debra K. Higley, Catherine B. Enomoto
2019, Mountain Geologist (56) 365-396
Nine 1D burial history models were built across the Appalachian Basin to reconstruct the burial, erosional, and thermal maturation histories of contained petroleum source rocks. Models were calibrated to measured downhole temperature and to vitrinite reflectance (% Ro) data from Devonian through Pennsylvanian petroleum source rocks. The highest levels...
Coastal Salinity Index along the southeastern Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico, 1983 to 2018
Matthew D. Petkewich, Kirsten Lackstrom, Bryan J. McCloskey, Lauren F. Rouen, Paul A. Conrads
2019, Open-File Report 2019-1090
Coastal droughts have a different dynamic than upland droughts, which are typically characterized by agricultural, hydrologic, meteorological, and (or) socioeconomic effects. Drought uniquely affects coastal ecosystems because of changes in the salinity conditions of estuarine creeks and rivers. The location of the freshwater-saltwater interface in surface-water bodies is an important...
Spatial fingerprinting of biogenic and anthropogenic volatile organic compounds in an arid unsaturated zone
Christopher Green, Wentai Luo, Christopher H. Conaway, Karl B. Haase, Ronald J. Baker, Brian J. Andraski
2019, Vadose Zone Journal (18)
Subsurface volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can pose risks to human and environmental health and mediate biological processes. VOCs have both anthropogenic and biogenic origins, but the relative importance of these sources has not been explored in subsurface environments. This study synthesizes 17 years of VOC data from the Amargosa Desert...
Wetland biomass and productivity in Coastal Louisiana: Base line data (1976-2015) and knowledge gaps for the development of spatially explicit models for ecosystem restoration and rehabilitation initiatives
Victor H. Rivera-Monroy, Courtney Elliton, Siddhartha Narra, Ehab Meselhe, Xiaochen Zhao, Eric White, Charles E. Sasser, Jenneke M. Visser, X. Meng, Hongqing Wang, Zuo Xue, Fernando Jaramillo
2019, Water (11)
Coastal Louisiana host 37% of the coastal wetland area in the conterminous US, including one of the deltaic coastal regions more susceptible to the synergy of human and natural impacts causing wetland loss. As a result of the construction of flood protection infrastructure, dredging of channels across wetlands for oil/gas...
Seasonal, spring-neap, and tidal variation in cohesive sediment transport parameters in estuarine shallows
Rachel Allen, Jessica R. Lacy, Mark T. Stacey, Evan A Variano
2019, Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans (124) 7265-7284
Numerical models for predicting sediment concentrations and transport rely on parameters such as settling velocity and bed erodibility that describe sediment characteristics, yet these parameters are rarely probed directly. We investigated temporal and spatial variation in sediment parameters in the shallows of San Pablo Bay, CA. Flow, turbulence, and suspended...
Permeability anisotropy and relative permeability in sediments from the National Gas Hydrate Program Expedition 02, offshore India
Sheng Dai, J. Kim, Yue Xu, William F. Waite, Junbong Jang, J. Yoneda, Timothy S. Collett, Pushpendra Kumar
2019, Journal of Marine and Petroleum Geology (108) 705-713
Gas and water permeability through hydrate-bearing sediments essentially governs the economic feasibility of gas production from gas hydrate deposits. Characterizing a reservoir’s permeability can be difficult because even collocated permeability measurements can vary by 4-5 orders of magnitude, due partly to differences between how various testing methods inherently measure permeability...
Pressure core based onshore laboratory analysis on mechanical properties of hydrate-bearing sediments recovered during India's National Gas Hydrate Program Expedition (NGHP) 02
J. Yoneda, Motoi Oshima, Masato Kida, Akira Kato, Yoshihiro Konno, Yusuke Jin, Junbong Jang, William F. Waite, Pushpendra Kumar, Norio Tenma
2019, Marine and Petroleum Geology (108) 482-501
A solid understanding of the mechanical properties of hydrate-bearing sediments is essential for the safe and economic development of methane hydrate as an energy resource. In 2015, 104 pressure cores were collected, recovering sediments from above and within concentrated hydrate reservoirs in the Krishna-Godavari Basin, as part of India’s National...
Physical property characteristics of gas hydrate-bearing reservoir and associated seal sediments collected during NGHP-02 in the Krishna-Godavari Basin, in the offshore of India
Junbong Jang, William F. Waite, Laura A. Stern, Timothy S. Collett, Pushpendra Kumar
2019, Marine and Petroleum Geology (108) 249-271
India’s National Gas Hydrate Program Expedition 02 (NGHP-02), was conducted to better understand geologic controls on gas hydrate occurrence and morphology, targeting potentially coarse-grained sediments near the base of the continental slope offshore eastern India. This study combines seismic, logging-while-drilling data, and a petroleum systems approach to provide a...
Compressibility and particle crushing of Krishna-Godavari Basin sediments from offshore India: Implications for gas production from deep-water gas hydrate deposits
J. Kim, Sheng Dai, Junbong Jang, William F. Waite, Timothy S. Collett, Pushpendra Kumar
2019, Marine and Petroleum Geology (108) 697-704
Depressurizing a gas hydrate reservoir to extract methane induces high effective stresses that act to compress the reservoir. Predicting whether a gas hydrate reservoir is viable as an energy resource requires enhanced understanding of the reservoir’s compressibility and susceptibility to particle crushing in response to elevated effective stress because of...
Assessing spatial and temporal patterns in sagebrush steppe vegetation communities 2012-2018: Grand Teton National Park
Christian Stratton, Andrew Hoegh, Kathryn M. Irvine, Kristin Legg, Kelly McCloskey, Erin K. Shanahan, Mike Tercek, David Thoma
2019, Natural Resource Report NPS/GRYN/NRR-2019/2020
Visual cover class data were collected on over 80 species across 30 permanent sampling frames in sagebrush steppe vegetation communities in Grand Teton National Park from 2012 to 2018. In this report, temporal and spatial patterns in species composition were assessed and used to inform potential sampling strategies for future...
Using oblique imagery to measure hypsometric changes in sandbar volume following controlled floods in the Grand Canyon
Ryan Lima, Daniel D. Buscombe, Temuulen T. Sankey, Paul E. Grams, Erich R. Mueller
2019, Conference Paper, Proceedings of SEDHYD 2019
Measuring changes in the elevation distribution of sub-aerial fine (< 2 mm ) sediment and estimating sandbar volume multiple times per year can improve sediment budget calculations in fluvial systems. In the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, effects of dam operations on sandbar size and distribution is of long-term...
Monitoring, forecasting collapse events, and mapping pyroclastic deposits at Sinabung volcano with satellite imagery
John S. Pallister, Rick Wessels, Julia P. Griswold, Wendy A. McCausland, Nugraha Kartadinata, Hendra Gunawan, Agus Budianto, Sofyan Primulyana
2019, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (382) 149-163
During the ongoing (2013–present) eruption of Sinabung volcano, north Sumatra, we have routinely used a variety of satellite remote sensing data to observe and forecast lava dome and lava flow collapse events, to map the resulting pyroclastic deposits, and to estimate effusion rates. In this paper, we focus on the first two years of the current eruption...
