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Publications

The following list of California Water Science Center publications includes both official USGS publications and journal articles authored by our scientists.

Filter Total Items: 1734

Modeled ground water age distributions

The age of ground water in any given sample is a distributed quantity representing distributed provenance (in space and time) of the water. Conventional analysis of tracers such as unstable isotopes or anthropogenic chemical species gives discrete or binary measures of the presence of water of a given age. Modeled ground water age distributions provide a continuous measure of contributions from di
Authors
Linda R. Woolfenden, Timothy R. Ginn

Evidence for prolonged El Nino-like conditions in the Pacific during the Late Pleistocene: a 43 ka noble gas record from California groundwaters

Information on the ocean/atmosphere state over the period spanning the Last Glacial Maximum - from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene - provides crucial constraints on the relationship between orbital forcing and global climate change. The Pacific Ocean is particularly important in this respect because of its dominant role in exporting heat and moisture from the tropics to higher latitudes. Thro
Authors
J.T. Kulongoski, David R. Hilton, J. A. Izbicki, K. Belitz

Utilization by fishes of the Alviso Island ponds and adjacent waters in south san francisco bay following restoration to tidal influence

Earthen levees of three isolated salt ponds known locally as the Alviso Island Ponds were intentionally breached in March 2006 to allow tidal exchange of the ponds with water from Coyote Creek. The water exchange transformed the previously fishless hypersaline ponds into lower salinity habitats suitable for fish life. This study documented fish utilization of the ponds, adjacent reaches of Coyote
Authors
M. K. Saiki, F.H. Mejia

Quantifying fluxes and characterizing compositional changes of dissolved organic matter in aquatic systems in situ using combined acoustic and optical measurements

Studying the dynamics and geochemical behavior of dissolved and particulate organic material is difficult because concentration and composition may rapidly change in response to aperiodic as well as periodic physical and biological forcing. Here we describe a method useful for quantifying fluxes and analyzing dissolved organic matter (DOM) dynamics. The method uses coupled optical and acoustic mea
Authors
B.D. Downing, E. Boss, B.A. Bergamaschi, J.A. Fleck, M. A. Lionberger, N. K. Ganju, D. H. Schoellhamer, R. Fujii

Integrating scientific knowledge into large-scale restoration programs: the CALFED Bay-Delta Program experience

Integrating science into resource management activities is a goal of the CALFED Bay-Delta Program, a multi-agency effort to address water supply reliability, ecological condition, drinking water quality, and levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta of northern California. Under CALFED, many different strategies were used to integrate science, including interaction between the research and manage
Authors
Kimberly A. Taylor, A. Short

The ecohealth assessment and ecological restoration division of urban water system in Beijing

Evaluating six main rivers and six lakes in Beihuan water system (BWS) and diagnosing the limiting factors of eco-health were conducted for the ecohealth assessment and ecological restoration division of urban water system (UWS) for Beijing. The results indicated that Jingmi River and Nanchang River were in a healthy state, the degree of membership to unhealthy were 0.358, 0.392, respectively; whi
Authors
J. Liu, M. Ma, F. Zhang, Z. Yang, Joseph L. Domagalski

A simplified water temperature model for the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam

Glen Canyon Dam, located on the Colorado River in northern Arizona, has affected the physical, biological and cultural resources of the river downstream in Grand Canyon. One of the impacts to the downstream physical environment that has important implications for the aquatic ecosystem is the transformation of the thermal regime from highly variable seasonally to relatively constant year-round, owi
Authors
S.A. Wright, C.R. Anderson, N. Voichick

Effects of the herbicide diuron on cordgrass (Spartina foliosa) reflectance and photosynthetic parameters

Early indicators of salt marsh plant stress are needed to detect stress before it is manifested as changes in biomass and coverage. We explored a variety of leaf-level spectral reflectance and fluorescence variables as indicators of stress in response to the herbicide diuron. Diuron, a Photosystem II inhibitor, is heavily used in areas adjacent to estuaries, but its ecological effects are just beg
Authors
S.L. Williams, A. Carranza, J. Kunzelman, S. Datta, Kathryn Kuivila

Turbulent stresses and secondary currents in a tidal-forced channel with significant curvature and asymmetric bed forms

Acoustic Doppler current profilers are deployed to measure both the mean flow and turbulent properties in a channel with significant curvature. Direct measurements of the Reynolds stress show a significant asymmetry over the tidal cycle where stresses are enhanced during the flood tide and less prominent over the ebb tide. This asymmetry is corroborated by logarithmic fits using 10min10min average
Authors
D.A. Fong, Stephen G. Monismith, M.T. Stacey, J.R. Burau

Assessing the occurrence and distribution of pyrethroids in water and suspended sediments

The distribution of pyrethroid insecticides in the environment was assessed by separately measuring concentrations in the dissolved and suspended sediment phases of surface water samples. Filtered water was extracted by HLB solid-phase extraction cartridges, while the sediment on the filter was sonicated and cleaned up using carbon and aluminum cartridges. Detection limits for the 13 pyrethroids a
Authors
M.L. Hladik, K.M. Kuivila

Concentrations and loads of suspended sediment-associated pesticides in the San Joaquin River, California and tributaries during storm events

Current-use pesticides associated with suspended sediments were measured in the San Joaquin River, California and its tributaries during two storm events in 2008. Nineteen pesticides were detected: eight herbicides, nine insecticides, one fungicide and one insecticide synergist. Concentrations for the herbicides (0.1 to 3000 ng/g; median of 6.1 ng/g) were generally greater than those for the insec
Authors
M.L. Hladik, Joseph L. Domagalski, K.M. Kuivila

A new syringe pump apparatus for the retrieval and temporal analysis of helium in groundwaters and geothermal fluids

We present details of a newly designed syringe pump apparatus for the retrieval and temporal analysis of helium (SPARTAH). The device is composed of a commercially available syringe pump connected to coils of Cu tubing, which interface the syringe and the groundwater or geothermal wellhead. Through test deployments at geothermal wells in Iceland and California, we show that well fluids are drawn s
Authors
P.H. Barry, David R. Hilton, M.D. Tryon, K. M. Brown, J.T. Kulongoski