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Publications

These publications are written or co-authored by Central Midwest Water Science Center personnel in conjuction with their work at the USGS and other government agencies.  They include USGS reports, journal articles, conference proceedings, and published abstracts that  are available in the USGS Publications  Warehouse.

Filter Total Items: 938

Spatial and temporal variations in phosphorus loads in the Illinois River Basin, Illinois USA

Total phosphorus (TP) loads in many rivers in the north-central United States have increased, including the Illinois River at Valley City, Illinois, USA, which increased 39% from the periods 1989–1996 to 2015–2019 despite efforts to reduce loads from point and nonpoint sources. Here, we quantify long-term variations in phosphorus (P) loads in the Illinois River and its tributaries and identify fac
Authors
Gregory F. McIsaac, Timothy O. Hodson, Momvcilo Markus, Rabin Bhattarai, Daniel Chulgi Kim

Sediment and nutrient retention on a reconnected floodplain of an Upper Mississippi River tributary, 2013–2018

The connection of rivers with their floodplains has been greatly reduced in agricultural drainage basins, especially in the Upper Mississippi River Basin. The restriction of the Mississippi River from its floodplain has reduced the sediment trapping and nutrient deposition capabilities of the floodplain, exacerbating water quality problems in the river and in downstream waterbodies. A small part o
Authors
Lynn A. Bartsch, Rebecca M. Kreiling, Lance R. Gruhn, Jessica D. Garrett, William B. Richardson, Greg M. Nalley

Intake efficiency field results for Federal Interagency Sedimentation Project bag samplers

The Federal Interagency Sedimentation Project (FISP) standardizes and advances sediment science among federal agencies. It is important to ensure that the FISP bag samplers perform isokinetically under all tested and approved conditions and collect samples that are representative of the stream or river cross-section. A measure of a sampler’s isokinetic behavior is its intake efficiency, which is d
Authors
Adam E. Manaster, Mark N. Landers, Timothy D. Straub

Root-mean-square error (RMSE) or mean absolute error (MAE): When to use them or not

The root-mean-squared error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE) are widely used metrics for evaluating models. Yet, there remains enduring confusion over their use, such that a standard practice is to present both, leaving it to the reader to decide which is more relevant. In a recent reprise to the 200-year debate over their use, Willmott and Matsuura (2005) and Chai and Draxler (2014) give argu
Authors
Timothy O. Hodson

Dynamic rating method for computing discharge from time-series stage data

Ratings are used for a variety of reasons in water-resources investigations. The simplest rating relates discharge to the stage of the river. From a pure hydrodynamics perspective, all rivers and streams have some form of hysteresis in the relation between stage and discharge because of unsteady flow as a flood wave passes. Simple ratings are unable to represent hysteresis in a stage/discharge rel
Authors
Marian M. Domanski, Robert R. Holmes, Elizabeth N. Heal

Water quality in the Missouri River alluvial aquifer near the Independence, Missouri, well field, 1997–2018

Groundwater-quality data collected from 1997 through 2018 from 68 monitoring locations open to the Missouri River alluvial aquifer (hereafter referred to as the “alluvial aquifer”) near the Independence, Missouri, well field were analyzed by the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the City of Independence, Missouri. This analysis was done to assess the quality of the water in the alluvial
Authors
Robert T. Kay, Heather M. Krempa, Katie M. Hulsey

Central Midwest Water Science Center— Harmful Algal Blooms team

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Central Midwest Water Science Center (CMWSC) includes three States—Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri. USGS water science centers across the Nation provide information on water resources including streamflow, water use, water availability, and the quality of surface water and groundwater (https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources).The USGS CMWSC Harmful Algal B
Authors
Katherine M. Summers, Heather M. Krempa, Jessica D. Garrett

Estimated daily mean streamflow in Iowa using the Flow-Duration Curve Transfer Method StreamStats application

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) operates many streamgages throughout the country that provide historical and real-time daily streamflow information. Accurate estimates of daily streamflow and the percentage of time that a certain volume of streamflow occurs or is exceeded in a stream is crucial information for structure design and other activities conducted by federal, state, and local officials
Authors
Mackenzie K. Marti, Harper N. Wavra, Andrea Medenblik

Quality of surface water in Missouri, water year 2020

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, monitors stations designed for the Ambient Water-Quality Monitoring Network, a collection of stations that monitor streams and springs in Missouri. During water year 2020 (October 1, 2019, through September 30, 2020), the U.S. Geological Survey collected water-quality data at 72 stations: 70 Ambient Water
Authors
Camille E. Buckley

Uncertainty analysis of index-velocity meters and discharge computations at the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal near Lemont, Illinois, water years 2006–16

Monitoring discharge in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal is critical for the accounting done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers of the diversion of water from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River Basin by the State of Illinois. The primary streamgage used for this discharge monitoring, the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal near Lemont, Illinois (U.S. Geological Survey station 05536890), is ope
Authors
Thomas M. Over, Marian Muste, James J. Duncker, Heng-Wei Tsai, P. Ryan Jackson, Kevin K. Johnson, Frank L. Engel, Crystal D. Prater

FluOil: A novel tool for modeling the transport of oil-particle aggregates in inland waterways

Spilled oil in inland waterways can aggregate with mineral and organic particles to form oil-particle aggregates (OPAs). OPAs can be transported in suspension or deposited to the bed. Modeling the fate and transport of OPAs can provide useful information for making mitigation decisions. A novel open-source tool, FluOil, is developed to predict where OPAs may deposit and when they arrive in affecte
Authors
Yilan Li, Zhenduo Zhu, David T. Soong, Hamed Khorasani, Shu Wang, Faith A. Fitzpatrick, Marcelo H. Garcia

Pharmaceutical pollution of the world’s rivers

Environmental exposure to active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) can have negative effects on the health of ecosystems and humans. While numerous studies have monitored APIs in rivers, these employ different analytical methods, measure different APIs, and have ignored many of the countries of the world. This makes it difficult to quantify the scale of the problem from a global perspective. Furth
Authors
John L. Wilkinson, Alistair B. A. Boxall, Dana W. Kolpin, Kenneth M. Y. Leung, Racliffe W. S. Lai, Cristóbal Galbán-Malagón, Aiko D. Adell, J. Mondon, M. Metian, R. Marchant, Alejandra Bouzas-Monroy, Aida Cuni-Sanchez, A. Coors, Carriquiriborde P., M. Rojo, C. Gordon, Magdalena Cara, M. Moermond, Thais Luarte, V. Petrosyan, Yekaterina Perikhanyan, Clare S. Mahon, Christopher J. McGurk, T. Hofmann, T. Kormoker, V. Iniguez, J. Guzman-Otazo, Jean L. Tavares, Francisco Gildasio de Figueiredo, Maria T. P. Razzolini, V. Dougnon, G. Gbaguidi, Oumar Traoré, Jules M. Blais, Linda E. Kimpe, M. Wong, D. Wong, R. Ntchantcho, J. Pizarro, Guang-Guo Ying, Chang-Er Chen, Martha Páez, Jina Martínez-Lara, Jean-Paul Otamonga, John Poté, Suspense A. Ifo, Penelope J. Wilson, Silvia Echeverría-Sáenz, N. Udikovic-Kolic, M. Milakovic, D. Fatta-Kassinos, L. Ioannou-Ttofa, Vladimíra Belušová, J. Vymazal, María Cárdenas-Bustamante, Bayable A. Kassa, J Garric, A. Chaumot, Peter Gibba, I. Kunchulia, Seidensticker S., G. Lyberatos, Halldór P. Halldórsson, Molly Melling, T. Shashidhar, Manisha Lamba, A. Nastiti, A. Supriatin, N. Pourang, A. Abedini, Omar Abdullah, Salem S. Gharbia, F. Pilla, B. Chefetz, T. Topaz, Koffi Marcellin Yao, B. Aubakirova, R. Beisenova, L. Olaka, Jemimah Mulu, P. Chatanga, V. Ntuli, Nathaniel T. Blama, S. Sherif, Ahmad Zaharin Aris, Ley Juen Looi, M. Niang, Seydou T. Traore, Rik Oldenkamp, O. Ogunbanwo, M. Ashfaq, M. Iqbal, Z. Abdeen, A. O'Dea, Jorge Manuel Morales-Saldaña, M. Custodio, H. de la Cruz, I. Navarrete, F. Carvalho, Alhaji B. Gogra, Bashiru M. Koroma, Vesna Cerkvenik-Flajs, Mitja Gombać, M. Thwala, K. Choi, H. Kang, John L. Celestino Ladu, A. Rico, P. Amerashinghe, A. Sobek, G. Horlitz, Armin K. Zenker, Alex C. King, Jheng-Jie Jiang, Rebecca Kariuki, M. Tumbo, U. Tezel, Turgut T. Onay, Julius B. Lejju, Y. Vystavna, Y. Vergeles, H. Heinzen, Andrés Pérez-Parada, Douglas B. Sims, M. Figy, David Good, C. Teta