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
DGMETA (version 1)—Dissolved gas modeling and environmental tracer analysis computer program
DGMETA (Dissolved Gas Modeling and Environmental Tracer Analysis) is a Microsoft Excel-based computer program that is used for modeling air-water equilibrium conditions from measurements of dissolved gases and for computing concentrations of environmental tracers that rely on air-water equilibrium model results. DGMETA can solve for the temperature, salinity, excess air, fractionation of gases, or
Authors
Bryant C. Jurgens, J. K. Böhlke, Karl Haase, Eurybiades Busenberg, Andrew G. Hunt, Jeffrey A. Hansen
Quantifying erosion rates by using terrestrial laser scanning at Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park, Nevada County, California, 2014–17
The abandoned hydraulic mine pit at Malakoff Diggins near Grass Valley, California, can produce large volumes of eroded sediment transportable by storm runoff. Sediment-laden water discharged from the pit is a major source of heavy metals to Humbug Creek and the South Yuba River. To develop a comprehensive sediment budget for the Malakoff Diggins mine pit and identify sources of sediment and metal
Authors
James F. Howle, Charles N. Alpers, Alfred J. Ward, Sandra Bond, Jennifer A. Curtis
Stream corridor sources of suspended sediment and phosphorus from an agricultural tributary to the Great Lakes
Fine-grained sediment and phosphorous are major contaminants in the Great Lakes and their tributaries. Plum Creek, Wisconsin (92 km2), a tributary to the Lower Fox River, has a Total Maximum Daily Load
(TMDL) requiring reductions of suspended sediment and phosphorus loading by 70% and 77%, respectively. In 2016-18, an integrated sediment fingerprinting and stream corridor-based sediment budget s
Authors
Faith A. Fitzpatrick, James Blount, Leah Kammel, David L. Hoover, Allen C. Gellis, Barbara C. Scudder Eikenberry
Determination of study reporting limits for pesticide constituent data for the California Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment Program Priority Basin Project, 2004–2018—Part 1: National Water Quality Schedules 2003, 2032, or 2033, and 2060
The California Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment Program Priority Basin Project (GAMA-PBP) is a long-term cooperative project designed to assess the quality of groundwater resources used for public and domestic drinking water supplies in the State of California, to monitor and evaluate changes to that quality, to investigate the human and natural factors controlling water quality, and
Authors
Miranda S. Fram, Sylvia V. Stork
Deglacial water-table decline in Southern California recorded by noble gas isotopes
Constraining the magnitude of past hydrological change may improve understanding and predictions of future shifts in water availability. Here we demonstrate that water-table depth, a sensitive indicator of hydroclimate, can be quantitatively reconstructed using Kr and Xe isotopes in groundwater. We present the first-ever measurements of these dissolved noble gas isotopes in groundwater at high pre
Authors
Alan M. Seltzer, Jessica Ng, Wesley R. Danskin, Justin T. Kulongoski, Riley Gannon, Martin Stute, Jeffery P. Severinghaus
Exposure and potential effects of pesticides and pharmaceuticals in protected streams of the US National Park Service southeast Region
Globally protected areas offer refugia for a broad range of taxa including threatened and endangered species. The United States National Park Service (NPS) manages public lands to preserve biodiversity, but increasing park visitation and development of surrounding landscapes increase exposure to and effects from bioactive contaminants. The risk (exposure and hazard) to NPS protected-stream ecosyst
Authors
Paul M. Bradley, Kristin M. Romanok, Jeffrey R. Duncan, William Battaglin, Jimmy Clark, Michelle Hladik, Bradley Huffman, Luke Iwanowicz, Celeste A. Journey, Kelly Smalling
By
Ecosystems Mission Area, Water Resources Mission Area, Contaminant Biology, Environmental Health Program, Toxic Substances Hydrology, California Water Science Center, Colorado Water Science Center, Eastern Ecological Science Center, New Jersey Water Science Center, South Atlantic Water Science Center (SAWSC)
Pesticide mixtures in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, 2016–17: Results from year 2 of the Delta Regional Monitoring Program
The Delta Regional Monitoring Program was developed by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board in response to the decline of pelagic fish species in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta that was observed in the early 2000s. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Delta Regional Monitoring Program, has been responsible for collecting and analyzing surface-water samples for a
Authors
Matthew D. De Parsia, Emily E. Woodward, James L. Orlando, Michelle L. Hladik
Observations of the spawning ecology of the imperiled Clear Lake Hitch Lavinia exilicauda chi
Migrations for the purposes of reproduction are widely documented across the animal kingdom and are particularly common in fishes and other aquatic organisms (Dingle 2014). One important migration strategy in fishes is potamodromy, which is the movement from one location to another entirely within freshwater (Morais and Daverat 2016). Thurow (2016) estimated that worldwide there are approximatel
Authors
Frederick V. Feyrer
History and sources of co-occurring pesticides in an abstraction well unravelled by age distributions of depth specific groundwater samples
When groundwater-based drinking water supply becomes contaminated, the timing and source of contamination are obvious questions. However, contaminants often have diffuse sources and different contaminants may have different sources even in a single groundwater well, making these questions complicated to answer. Age dating of groundwater has been used to reconstruct contaminant travel times to well
Authors
Rasmus Jakobsen, Klaus Hinsby, Jens Aamand, Peter van der Keur, Jacob Kidmose, Roland Purtschert, Bryant Jurgens, Jürgen Sültenfuß, Christian N. Albers
Review of and recommendations for monitoring contaminants and their effects in the San Francisco Bay−Delta
Legacy and current-use contaminants enter into and accumulate throughout the San Francisco Bay−Delta (Bay−Delta), and are present at concentrations with known effects on species important to this diverse watershed. There remains major uncertainty and a lack of focused research able to address and provide understanding of effects across multiple biological scales, despite previous and ongoing empha
Authors
Richard E Connon, Simone Hasenbein, Susanne M. Brander, Helen C. Poynton, Erika B Holland, Daniel Schlenk, James Orlando, Michelle Hladik, Tracy K. Collier, Nathaniel L Scholz, John P Incardona, Nancy D. Denslow, Amro Hamdoun, Sascha Nicklisch, Natalia Garcia-Reyero, Edward J. Perkins, Evan P Gallagher, Xin Deng, Dan Wang, Stephanie Fong, Richard S Breuer, Mehrdad Hajibabei, James B Brown, John K Colbourne, Thomas M Young, Gary Cherr, Andrew Whitehead, Anne E. Todgham
Near-field receiving-water monitoring of trace metals and a benthic community near the Palo Alto Regional Water Quality Control Plant in south San Francisco Bay, California—2018
Trace-metal concentrations in sediment and in the clam Macoma petalum (formerly reported as Macoma balthica), clam reproductive activity, and benthic macroinvertebrate community structure were investigated in a mudflat 1 kilometer south of the discharge of the Palo Alto Regional Water Quality Control Plant (PARWQCP) in south San Francisco Bay, Calif. This report includes the data collected by U.S.
Authors
Daniel J. Cain, Janet K. Thompson, Francis Parchaso, Sarah Pearson, Robin Stewart, Matthew A. Turner, Kelly H. Shrader, Emily L. Zierdt Smith, Samuel N. Luoma
Summary of hydrologic testing, wellbore-flow data, and expanded water-level and water-quality data, 2011–15, Fort Irwin National Training Center, San Bernardino County, California
In view of the U.S. Army’s historical reliance and plans to increase demands on groundwater to supply its operations at Fort Irwin National Training Center (NTC), California, coupled with the continuing water-level declines in some developed groundwater basins as a result of pumping, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the U.S. Army, evaluated the water resources, including wate
Authors
Joseph M. Nawikas, Jill N. Densmore, David R. O'Leary, David C. Buesch, John A. Izbicki