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: 18419
Resolving a paradox—high mercury deposition, but low bioaccumulation in northeastern Puerto Rico
At a “clean air” trade winds site in northeastern Puerto Rico, we found an apparent paradox: atmospheric total mercury (THg) deposition was highest of any site in the USA Mercury Deposition Network, but assimilation into the local food web was quite low. Avian blood THg concentrations (n = 31, from eight species in five foraging guilds) ranged widely from 0.2 to 32 ng g−1 (median of 4.3 ng g−1). W
Authors
James B. Shanley, Mark C. Marvin-DiPasquale, Oksana P. Lane, Wayne J. Arendt, Steven J. Hall, William H. McDowell
Solute transport and transformation in an intermittent, headwater mountain stream with diurnal discharge fluctuations
Time-variable discharge is known to control both transport and transformation of solutes in the river corridor. Still, few studies consider the interactions of transport and transformation together. Here, we consider how diurnal discharge fluctuations in an intermittent, headwater stream control reach-scale solute transport and transformation as measured with conservative and reactive tracers duri
Authors
Adam S Ward, Marie J Kurz, Noah Schmadel, Julia LA Knapp, Phillip J Blaen, Ciaran Harman, Jennifer D. Drummond, David M Hannah, Stefan Krause, Angang Li, Eugenia Marti, Alexander Milner, Kerry Neil, Stephen Plont, Aaron I. Packman, Nathan I Wisnoski, Steven Wondzell, Jay P. Zarnetske
The Life of P: A biogeochemical and sociopolitical challenge in the Everglades
• Phosphorus (P) is an essential element for all life forms, yet to understand its life cycle and impact we need to grasp not only the biogeochemical life of P, but also how P intersects with human activities and values.
• Phosphorus is the limiting nutrient in the oligotrophic Everglades ecosystem. Thus, the anthropogenic addition of P to the landscape and its subsequent transport, transformation
Authors
Victor H. Rivera-Monroy, Jessica Cattelino, Jeffrey R Wozniak, Katrina Schwartz, Gregory Noe, Edward Castaneda-Moya, Gregory R Koch
The use of stable isotope-based water age to evaluate a hydrodynamic model
Transport time scales are common metrics of the strength of transport processes. Water age is the time elapsed since water from a specific source has entered a study area. An observational method to estimate water age relies on the progressive concentration of the heavier isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen in water that occurs during evaporation. The isotopic composition is used to derive the fractio
Authors
Edward Gross, Stephen Andrews, Brian A. Bergamaschi, Bryan D. Downing, Rusty Holleman, Scott Burdick, John Durand
The ‘Ike Wai Hawai‘i groundwater recharge tool
This paper discusses the design and implementation
of the ‘Ike Wai Hawai‘i Groundwater Recharge Tool, an
application for providing data and analyses of the impacts of
land-cover and climate modifications on groundwater-recharge
rates for the island of O‘ahu. This application uses simulation
data based on a set of 29 land-cover types and two rainfall
scenarios to provide users with real-time rechar
Authors
Jared H. McLean, Sean B. Cleaveland, Kolja Rotzoll, Scot K. Izuka, Jason Leigh, Gwen A. Jacobs, Ryan Theriot
Groundwater and surface-water resources near Red Fleet Reservoir, Uintah County, Utah
Red Fleet Reservoir in Uintah County, Utah, is an approximately 26,000 acre-foot (acre-ft) on-channel reservoir in the Big Brush Creek drainage on the south slopes of the Uinta Mountains. It is operated primarily for irrigation needs while providing a supplemental drinking-water supply to the Vernal, Utah area. Red Fleet Reservoir, which was operated by the Bureau of Reclamation and the Uintah Wat
Authors
Thomas M. Marston, John E. Solder, Katherine K. Jones
Groundwater availability in the Ozark Plateaus aquifer system
Executive SummaryThe study described in this report, initiated by the U.S. Geological Survey in 2014, was designed to evaluate fresh groundwater resources within the Ozark Plateaus, central United States, as an area within a broader national assessment of groundwater availability. The goals of the Ozark study were to evaluate historical effects of human activities on water levels and groundwater a
Authors
Brian R. Clark, Leslie L. Duncan, Katherine J. Knierim
Applying the Watershed Approach to Urban Ecosystems in Baltimore
No abstract available.
Authors
Peter Groffman, Laurence Band, Kenneth Belt, Neil Bettez, Aditi Bhaskar, Edward Doheny, Jonathan Duncan, Sujay Kaushal, Emma Rosi-Marshall, Claire Welty
Co-located contemporaneous mapping of morphological, hydrological, chemical, and biological conditions in a 5th-order mountain stream network, Oregon, USA
A comprehensive set of measurements and calculated metrics describing physical, chemical, and biological conditions in the river corridor is presented. These data were collected in a catchment-wide, synoptic campaign in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest (Cascade Mountains, Oregon, USA) in summer 2016 during low-discharge conditions. Extensive characterization of 62 sites including surface wate
Authors
Adam S Ward, Jay P. Zarnetske, Viktor Baranov, Phillip J Blaen, Nicolai Brekenfeld, Rosalie Chu, Romain Derelle, Jennifer D. Drummond, Jan Fleckenstein, Vanessa Garayburu-Caruso, Emily B. Graham, David Hannah, Ciaran Harman, Jase Hixson, Julia LA Knapp, Stefan Krause, Marie Kurz, Jörg Lewandowski, Angang Li, Eugènia Martí, Melinda Miller, Alexander Milner, Kerry Neil, Luisa Orsini, Aaron I. Packman, Stephen Plont, Lupita Renteria, Kevin Roche, Todd V Royer, Noah Schmadel, Catalina Segura, James Stegen, Jason Toyoda, Jacqueline Wells, Nathan Wisnoski, Steven Wondzell
13C and 15N NMR identification of product compound classes from aqueous and solid phase photodegradation of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene
Abstract
Photolysis is one of the main transformation pathways for 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) released into the environment. Upon exposure to sunlight, TNT is known to undergo both oxidation and reduction reactions with release of nitrite, nitrate, and ammonium ions, followed by condensation reactions of the oxidation and reduction products. In this study, compound classes of transformation prod
Authors
Kevin A. Thorn
Hysteretic response of solutes and turbidity at the event scale across forested tropical montane watersheds
Concentration-discharge relationships are a key tool for understanding the sourcing and transport of material from watersheds to fluvial networks. Storm events in particular provide insight into variability in the sources of solutes and sediment within watersheds, and the hydrologic pathways that connect hillslope to stream channel. Here we examine high-frequency sensor-based specific conductance
Authors
Adam S. Wymore, Miguel C. Leon, James B. Shanley, William C. McDowell
Low streamflow trends at human-impacted and reference basins in the United States
We present a continent-scale exploration of trends in annual 7-day low streamflows at 2482 U.S. Geological Survey streamgages across the conterminous United States over the past 100, 75, and 50 years (1916–2015, 1941–2015 and 1966–2015). We used basin characteristics to identify subsets of study basins representative of reference basins with streamflow relatively free from human effects (n = 259),
Authors
Robert W. Dudley, Robert M. Hirsch, Stacey A. Archfield, Annalise G. Blum, Benjamin Renard