Publications
This list of Water Resources Mission Area publications includes both official USGS publications and journal articles authored by our scientists. A searchable database of all USGS publications can be accessed at the USGS Publications Warehouse.
Filter Total Items: 18418
Quality assurance/quality control procedure for New Jersey’s water-use data for the New Jersey Water Transfer Data System (NJWaTr)
This report is an instructional reference document that describes methods developed and used by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) New Jersey Water Science Center (NJWSC) to assure the quality and completeness of water-use data as provided by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) Bureau of Water Allocation. These data are owned wholly by the State of New Jersey. The role of
Authors
Jennifer L. Shourds
Trends in recent historical and projected climate data for the Colorado River Basin and potential effects on groundwater availability
Understanding recent historical and projected trends in precipitation and temperature in the Colorado River Basin, and estimating what the projected changes in these climate parameters may mean for groundwater resources in the region, is important for water managers and policymakers to sustainably manage water resources in the basin. Historical (1896–2019) precipitation and temperature data for th
Authors
Fred D. Tillman, Subhrendu Gangopadhyay, Tom Pruitt
Spatial variability in seasonal snowpack trends across the Rio Grande headwaters (1984 - 2017)
This study evaluated the spatial variability of trends in simulated snowpack properties across the Rio Grande headwaters of Colorado using the SnowModel snow evolution modeling system. SnowModel simulations were performed using a grid resolution of 100 m and 3-hourly time step over a 34-yr period (1984–2017). Atmospheric forcing was provided by phase 2 of the North American Land Data Assimilation
Authors
Graham A. Sexstone, Colin A. Penn, Glen Liston, Kelly Gleason, C. David Moeser, David W. Clow
A synthesis of patterns of environmental mercury inputs, exposure and effects in New York State
Mercury (Hg) pollution is an environmental problem that adversely affects human and ecosystem health at local, regional, and global scales—including within New York State. More than two-thirds of the Hg currently released to the environment originates, either directly or indirectly, from human activities. Since the early 1800s, global atmospheric Hg concentrations have increased by three- to eight
Authors
David C. Evers, Amy K. Sauer, Douglas A. Burns, Nicholas S Fisher, Diane Bertok, Evan M. Adams, Mark E H Burton, Charles T. Driscoll
Trihalomethane precursors: Land use hot spots, persistence during transport, and management options
To meet drinking water regulations, rather than investing in costly treatment plant operations, managers can look for ways to improve source water quality; this requires understanding watershed sources and fates of constituents of concern. Trihalomethanes (THMs) are one of the major classes of regulated disinfection byproducts, formed when a specific fraction of the organic carbon pool—referred to
Authors
Robert S. Eckard, Brian A. Bergamaschi, Brian A. Pellerin, Tamara E. C. Kraus, Peter J. Hernes
The firn meltwater Retention Model Intercomparison Project (RetMIP): Evaluation of nine firn models at four weather station sites on the Greenland ice sheet
Perennial snow, or firn, covers 80 % of the Greenland ice sheet and has the capacity to retain surface meltwater, influencing the ice sheet mass balance and contribution to sea-level rise. Multilayer firn models are traditionally used to simulate firn processes and estimate meltwater retention. We present, intercompare and evaluate outputs from nine firn models at four sites that represent the ice
Authors
Baptiste Vandecrux, Ruth Mottram, Peter Langen, Robert Fausto, Martin Olesen, C. Max Stevens, Vincent Verjans, Amber Lee, Stefan Ligtenberg, Peter Kuipers Munneke, Sergey S. Marchenko, Ward van Pelt, Colin R. Meyer, Sebastian B. Simonsen, Achim Heilig, Samira Samimi, Shawn J. Marshall, Horst Machguth, Michael J. MacFerrin, Masashi Niwano, Olivia L. Miller, Clifford I. Voss, Jason E. Box
Multi-year hydroclimatic droughts and pluvials across the conterminous United States
Time series of water‐year runoff for 2,109 hydrologic units (HUs) across the conterminous United States (CONUS) for the 1900 through 2014 period were used to identify drought and pluvial (i.e., wet) periods. Characteristics of the drought and pluvial events including frequency, duration, and severity were examined and compared. Additionally, a similar analysis was performed using gridded tree‐ring
Authors
Gregory J. McCabe, David M. Wolock
Comparison of groundwater storage changes from GRACE satellites with monitoring and modeling of major U.S. aquifers
GRACE satellite data are widely used to estimate groundwater storage (GWS) changes in aquifers globally; however, comparisons with GW monitoring and modeling data are limited. Here we compared GWS changes from GRACE over 15 yr (2002–2017) in 14 major U.S. aquifers with groundwater-level (GWL) monitoring data in ~23,000 wells and with regional and global hydrologic and land surface models. Results
Authors
Ashraf Rateb, Bridget R. Scanlon, Donald R. Pool, Alexander Y. Sun, Zizhan Zhang, Jianli Chen, Brian R. Clark, Dianna M. Crilley, Connor J. Haugh, Christopher M. Hobza, Mary C Hill, Virginia L. McGuire, Meredith Reitz, Hannes Muller Schmied Schmied, Edwin H. Sutanudjaja, Sean Swenson, David Wiese, Youlong Xia, Wesley O. Zell
Assessing uranium and select trace elements associated with breccia pipe uranium deposits in the Colorado River and main tributaries in Grand Canyon, USA
Assessing chemical loading from streams in remote, difficult-to-access watersheds is challenging. The Grand Canyon area in northern Arizona, an international tourist destination and sacred place for many Native Americans, is characterized by broad plateaus divided by canyons as much as two-thousand meters deep and hosts some of the highest-grade uranium deposits in the U.S. From 2015–2018 major su
Authors
Fred D. Tillman, Jessica R. Anderson, Joel A. Unema, Thomas Chapin
Soil moisture product validation good practices protocol, version 1.0
The Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) included soil moisture in the list of Essential
Climate Variables (ECVs) to express its important role in Earth’s water, energy and carbon cycle.
Soil moisture has a major impact on agriculture, land surface hydrology, weather, and climate
forecasting. This document is a community-based effort to provide recommendations on good
practices for the validatio
Authors
Carsten Montzka, Michael H. Cosh, Bagher Bayat, Ahmad Al Bitar, Aaron Berg, Rajat Bindlish, Heye Reemt Bogena, John D. Bolton, Francois Cabot, Todd Caldwell, Steven Chan, Andreas Colliander, Wade Crow, Narendra Das, Gabrielle De Lannoy, Wouter Dorigo, Steven R. Evett, Alexander Gruber, Sebastian Hahn, Thomas Jagdhuber, Scott F. Jones, Yann Kerr, Seung-bum Kim, Christian Koyama, Mehmed Kurum, Ernesto Lopez-Baeza, Francesco Mattia, Kaighin A. McColl, Susanne Mecklenburg, Binayak Mohanty, Peggy O´Neill, Dani Or, Thierry Pellarin, George P. Petropoulos, Maria Piles, Rolf H. Reichle, Nemesio Rodriguez-Fernandez, Christoph Rüdiger, Tracy Scanlon, Robert C. Schwartz, Daniel Spengler, Prashant K. Srivastava, Swati Suman, Robin van der Schalie, Wolfgang Wagner, Urs Wegmüller, Jean-Pierre Wigneron, Fernando Camacho, Jaime Nickeson
Carbon dioxide and methane flux in a dynamic Arctic tundra landscape: Decadal‐scale impacts of ice wedge degradation and stabilization
Ice wedge degradation is a widespread occurrence across the circumpolar Arctic causing extreme spatial heterogeneity in water distribution, vegetation, and energy balance across landscapes. These heterogeneities influence carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) fluxes, yet there is little understanding of how they effect change in landscape‐level carbon (C) gas flux over time. We measured CO2 and C
Authors
Kimberly P. Wickland, M.Torre Jorgenson, Joshua C. Koch, Mikhail Z. Kanevskiy, Robert G. Striegl
Transport and speciation of uranium in groundwater-surface water systems impacted by legacy milling operations
Growing worldwide concern over uranium contamination of groundwater resources has placed an emphasis on understanding uranium transport dynamics and potential toxicity in groundwater-surface water systems. In this study, we utilized novel in-situ sampling methods to establish the location and magnitude of contaminated groundwater entry into a receiving surface water environment, and to investigate
Authors
Patrick A. Byrne, Christopher C. Fuller, David L. Naftz, Robert L. Runkel, Niklas J Lehto, William L Dam