Assessment of water quality trends in the Minnesota River using non-parametric and parametric methods
H.O. Johnson, S.C. Gupta, A. V. Vecchia, F. Zvomuya
2009, Journal of Environmental Quality (38) 1018-1030
Excessive loading of sediment and nutrients to rivers is a major problem in many parts of the United States. In this study, we tested the non-parametric Seasonal Kendall (SEAKEN) trend model and the parametric USGS Quality of Water trend program (QWTREND) to quantify trends in water quality of the Minnesota...
Deposition and flux of sediment from the Po River, Italy: An idealized and wintertime numerical modeling study
A.J. Bever, C. K. Harris, C. R. Sherwood, R. P. Signell
2009, Marine Geology (260) 69-80
Recent studies of sediment dynamics and clinoform development in the northern Adriatic Sea focused on winter 2002-2003 and provided the data and motivation for development of a detailed sediment-transport model for the area near the Po River delta. We used both idealized test cases and more realistic simulations to improve...
Uncertainty in georeferencing current and historic plant locations
K. McEachern, K. Niessen
2009, Ecological Restoration (27) 152-159
With shrinking habitats, weed invasions, and climate change, repeated surveys are becoming increasingly important for rare plant conservation and ecological restoration. We often need to relocate historical sites or provide locations for newly restored sites. Georeferencing is the technique of giving geographic coordinates to the location of a site. Georeferencing...
Sources of uncertainty in flood inundation maps
J. D. Bales, C. R. Wagner
2009, Journal of Flood Risk Management (2) 139-147
Flood inundation maps typically have been used to depict inundated areas for floods having specific exceedance levels. The uncertainty associated with the inundation boundaries is seldom quantified, in part, because all of the sources of uncertainty are not recognized and because data available to quantify uncertainty seldom are available. Sources...
Water quality characterization in some birimian aquifers of the Birim Basin, Ghana
B.-Y. Bruce, S.M. Yidana, Y. Anku, T. Akabzaa, D. Asiedu
2009, KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering (13) 179-187
The objective of this study was to determine the main controls on the hydrochemistry of groundwater in the study area. Mass balance modeling was used simultaneously with multivariate R-mode hierarchical cluster analysis to determine the significant sources of variation in the hydrochemistry. Two water types have been revealed in this...
GIS applications for military operations in coastal zones
S. Fleming, T. Jordan, M. Madden, E.L. Usery, R. Welch
2009, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (64) 213-222
In order to successfully support current and future US military operations in coastal zones, geospatial information must be rapidly integrated and analyzed to meet ongoing force structure evolution and new mission directives. Coastal zones in a military-operational environment are complex regions that include sea, land and air features that demand...
Developmental toxicity in white leghorn chickens following in ovo exposure to perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS)
M. M. Peden-Adams, Joyce E. Stuckey, K.M. Gaworecki, J. Berger-Ritchie, K. Bryant, P.G. Jodice, T.R. Scott, J.B. Ferrario, B. Guan, C. Vigo, J.S. Boone, W.D. McGuinn, J.C. DeWitt, D.E. Keil
2009, Reproductive Toxicology (27) 307-318
Studies show that perfluorinated compounds cause various toxicological effects; nevertheless, effects on immune function and developmental endpoints have not been addressed at length. This study examined the effects of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) in white leghorn hatchlings on various developmental, immunological, and clinical health parameters. In addition, serum PFOS concentrations were...
Ground and surface temperature variability for remote sensing of soil moisture in a heterogeneous landscape
M.A. Giraldo, D. Bosch, M. Madden, L. Usery, M. Finn
2009, Journal of Hydrology (368) 214-223
At the Little River Watershed (LRW) heterogeneous landscape near Tifton Georgia US an in situ network of stations operated by the US Department of Agriculture-Agriculture Research Service-Southeast Watershed Research Lab (USDA-ARS-SEWRL) was established in 2003 for the long term study of climatic and soil biophysical processes. To develop an accurate...
Monitoring the removal of phosphate from ground water discharging through a pond-bottom permeable reactive barrier
T.D. McCobb, D.R. LeBlanc, A.J. Massey
2009, Ground Water Monitoring and Remediation (29) 43-55
Installation of a permeable reactive barrier to intercept a phosphate (PO4) plume where it discharges to a pond provided an opportunity to develop and test methods for monitoring the barrier’s performance in the shallow pond‐bottom sediments. The barrier is composed of zero‐valent‐iron mixed with the native sediments to a 0.6‐m...
Modelling predation by transient leopard seals for an ecosystem-based management of Southern Ocean fisheries
J. Forcada, D. Malone, J. Andrew Royle, I.J. Staniland
2009, Ecological Modelling (220) 1513-1521
Correctly quantifying the impacts of rare apex marine predators is essential to ecosystem-based approaches to fisheries management, where harvesting must be sustainable for targeted species and their dependent predators. This requires modelling the uncertainty in such processes as predator life history, seasonal abundance and movement, size-based predation, energetic requirements, and...
Aroclor 1248 exposure leads to immunomodulation, decreased disease resistance and endocrine disruption in the brown bullhead, Ameiurus nebulosus
L. R. Iwanowicz, V. S. Blazer, S. D. McCormick, P.A. Van Veld, C. A. Ottinger
2009, Aquatic Toxicology (93) 70-82
The brown bullhead Ameiurus nebulosus is a species of the family Ictaluridae commonly used as a sentinel of environmental contamination. While these fish have been utilized for this purpose in areas contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), few controlled, laboratory-based studies have been designed to document the effects of PCB mixtures...
Web services in the U.S. geological survey streamstats web application
J. D. Guthrie, C. Dartiguenave, Kernell G. Ries III
2009, Conference Paper, Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Geographic Information Systems and Web Services, GEOWS 2009
StreamStats is a U.S. Geological Survey Web-based GIS application developed as a tool for waterresources planning and management, engineering design, and other applications. StreamStats' primary functionality allows users to obtain drainage-basin boundaries, basin characteristics, and streamflow statistics for gaged and ungaged sites. Recently, Web services have been developed that provide...
Wildland-urban interface maps vary with purpose and context
S. I. Stewart, B. Wilmer, R. B. Hammer, G. H. Aplet, T. J. Hawbaker, C. Miller, V. C. Radeloff
2009, Journal of Forestry (107) 78-83
Maps of the wildland-urban interface (WUI) are both policy tools and powerful visual images. Although the growing number of WUI maps serve similar purposes, this article indicates that WUI maps derived from the same data sets can differ in important ways related to their original intended application. We discuss the...
Legacy effects of colonial millponds on floodplain sedimentation, bank erosion, and channel morphology, MID-Atlantic, USA
E.R. Schenk, C.R. Hupp
2009, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (45) 597-606
Many rivers and streams of the Mid-Atlantic Region, United States (U.S.) have been altered by postcolonial floodplain sedimentation (legacy sediment) associated with numerous milldams. Little Conestoga Creek, Pennsylvania, a tributary to the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay, is one of these streams. Floodplain sedimentation rates, bank erosion rates, and...
Sedimentary basin effects in Seattle, Washington: Ground-motion observations and 3D simulations
Arthur Frankel, William Stephenson, David Carver
2009, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (99) 1579-1611
Seismograms of local earthquakes recorded in Seattle exhibit surface waves in the Seattle basin and basin-edge focusing of S waves. Spectral ratios of Swaves and later arrivals at 1 Hz for stiff-soil sites in the Seattle basin show a dependence on the direction to the earthquake, with earthquakes to the...
Disease, predation and demography: Assessing the impacts of bovine tuberculosis on African buffalo by monitoring at individual and population levels
P.C. Cross, D.M. Heisey, J.A. Bowers, C.T. Hay, J. Wolhuter, P. Buss, M. Hofmeyr, A.L. Michel, Roy G. Bengis, T.L.F. Bird, Johan T. du Toit, W.M. Getz
2009, Journal of Applied Ecology (46) 467-475
SummaryUnderstanding the effects of disease is critical to determining appropriate management responses, but estimating those effects in wildlife species is challenging. We used bovine tuberculosis (BTB) in the African buffalo Syncerus caffer population of Kruger National Park, South Africa, as a case study to highlight the issues associated with estimating...
The stable carbon isotope biogeochemistry of acetate and other dissolved carbon species in deep subseafloor sediments at the northern Cascadia Margin
Verena B. Heuer, John W. Pohlman, Marta E. Torres, Marcus Elvert, Kai-Uwe Hinrichs
2009, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (73) 3323-3336
Ocean drilling has revealed the existence of vast microbial populations in the deep subseafloor, but to date little is known about their metabolic activities. To better understand the biogeochemical processes in the deep biosphere, we investigate the stable carbon isotope chemistry of acetate and other...
The effect of bathymetric filtering on nearshore process model results
N.G. Plant, K.L. Edwards, J.M. Kaihatu, J. Veeramony, L. Hsu, K. T. Holland
2009, Coastal Engineering (56) 484-493
Nearshore wave and flow model results are shown to exhibit a strong sensitivity to the resolution of the input bathymetry. In this analysis, bathymetric resolution was varied by applying smoothing filters to high-resolution survey data to produce a number of bathymetric grid surfaces. We demonstrate that the sensitivity of model-predicted...
New light on a dark subject: On the use of fluorescence data to deduce redox states of natural organic matter (NOM)
Donald L. Macalady, Katherine Walton-Day
2009, Aquatic Sciences (71) 135-143
This paper reports the use of excitation-emission matrix fluorescence spectroscopy (EEMS), parallel factor statistical analysis (PARAFAC), and oxidation-reduction experiments to examine the effect of redox conditions on PARAFAC model results for aqueous samples rich in natural organic matter. Fifty-four aqueous samples from 11 different geographic locations and two plant extracts...
Assessment tools for urban catchments: developing biological indicators based on benthic macroinvertebrates
A.H. Purcell, D.W. Bressler, M.J. Paul, M.T. Barbour, E.T. Rankin, J.L. Carter, V.H. Resh
2009, Journal of the American Water Resources Association (45) 306-319
Biological indicators, particularly benthic macroinvertebrates, are widely used and effective measures of the impact of urbanization on stream ecosystems. A multimetric biological index of urbanization was developed using a large benthic macroinvertebrate dataset (n = 1,835) from the Baltimore, Maryland, metropolitan area and then validated with datasets from Cleveland, Ohio...
Shallow seismic structure of Kunlun fault zone in northern Tibetan Plateau, China: Implications for the 2001 M s8.1 Kunlun earthquake
Chun-Yong Wang, Walter D. Mooney, Z. Ding, J. Yang, Z. Yao, H. Lou
2009, Geophysical Journal International (177) 978-1000
The shallow seismic velocity structure of the Kunlun fault zone (KLFZ) was jointly deduced from seismic refraction profiling and the records of trapped waves that were excited by five explosions. The data were collected after the 2001 Kunlun Ms8.1 earthquake in the northern Tibetan Plateau. Seismic phases for the in-line record...
Unique problems associated with seismic analysis of partially gas-saturated unconsolidated sediments
Myung W. Lee, T. S. Collett
2009, Marine and Petroleum Geology (26) 775-781
Gas hydrate stability conditions restrict the occurrence of gas hydrate to unconsolidated and high water-content sediments at shallow depths. Because of these host sediments properties, seismic and well log data acquired for the detection of free gas and associated gas hydrate-bearing sediments often require nonconventional analysis. For example, a conventional...
Assessment of planetary geologic mapping techniques for Mars using terrestrial analogs: The SP Mountain area of the San Francisco Volcanic Field, Arizona
Kenneth L. Tanaka, James A. Skinner, Larry S. Crumpler, James M. Dohm
2009, Planetary and Space Science (57) 510-532
We photogeologically mapped the SP Mountain region of the San Francisco Volcanic Field in northern Arizona, USA to evaluate and improve the fidelity of approaches used in geologic mapping of Mars. This test site, which was previously mapped in the field, is chiefly composed of Late Cenozoic cinder cones, lava...
Using nitrate to quantify quick flow in a karst aquifer
B.J. Mahler, B.D. Garner
2009, Ground Water (47) 350-360
In karst aquifers, contaminated recharge can degrade spring water quality, but quantifying the rapid recharge (quick flow) component of spring flow is challenging because of its temporal variability. Here, we investigate the use of nitrate in a two-endmember mixing model to quantify quick flow in Barton Springs, Austin, Texas. Historical...
Climatic effects of 30 years of landscape change over the Greater Phoenix, Arizona, region: 1. Surface energy budget changes
M. Georgescu, G. Miguez-Macho, L. T. Steyaert, C.P. Weaver
2009, Journal of Geophysical Research D: Atmospheres (114)
This paper is part 1 of a two-part study that evaluates the climatic effects of recent landscape change for one of the nation's most rapidly expanding metropolitan complexes, the Greater Phoenix, Arizona, region. The region's landscape evolution over an approximate 30-year period since the early 1970s is documented on the...
