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
PFHydro: A new watershed-scale model for post-fire runoff simulation
Runoff increases after wildfires that burn vegetation and create a condition of soil-water repellence (SWR). A new post-fire watershed hydrological model, PFHydro, was created to explicitly simulate vegetation interception and SWR effects for four burn severity categories: high, medium, low severity and unburned. The model was applied to simulate post-fire runoff from the Upper Cache Creek Watersh
Authors
Jun Wang, Michelle A. Stern, Vanessa M. King, Charles N. Alpers, Nigel W. T. Quinn, Alan L. Flint, Lorraine E. Flint
Baseline environmental monitoring of groundwater, surface water, and soil at the Ammonium Perchlorate Rocket Motor Destruction Facility at the Letterkenny Army Depot, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, 2016
Letterkenny Army Depot in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, built an Ammonium Perchlorate Rocket Motor Destruction (ARMD) facility in 2016. The ARMD Facility was designed to centralize rocket motor destruction and contain or capture all waste during the destruction process. Ideally, there would be no contaminant transport to air, soil, or water from the facility, but the Code of Federal Regulations requ
Authors
Daniel G. Galeone
Real-time assessments of water quality—A nowcast for Escherichia coli and cyanobacterial toxins
Threats to our recreational and drinking waters include disease-causing (pathogenic) organisms from fecal contamination and toxins produced by some species of cyanobacteria (cyanotoxins) that can cause acute and (or) chronic illnesses. Because traditional laboratory methods for detecting these threats take too long for prompt public health protection, tools for real-time assessments are needed to
Authors
Donna S. Francy, Amie M.G. Brady, Tammy M. Zimmerman
Morphological computation of dune evolution with equilibrium and non-equilibrium sediment-transport models
This paper presents an exploratory study that comprises the implementation and comparison of different approaches and parameterization of sediment transport mechanisms in a process-based morphological model for simulating river dunes. The purpose of this study was to assess the underlying physical processes associated with sediment transport and dune evolution simulated by the model with two diffe
Authors
Satomi Yamaguchi, Sanjay Giri, Yasuyuki Shimizu, Jonathan M. Nelson
Changes in event‐based streamflow magnitude and timing after suburban development with infiltration‐based stormwater management
Green stormwater infrastructure implementation in urban watersheds has outpaced our understanding of practice effectiveness on streamflow response to precipitation events. Long‐term monitoring of experimental urban watersheds in Clarksburg, Maryland, USA, provided an opportunity to examine changes in event‐based streamflow metrics in two treatment watersheds that transitioned from agriculture to s
Authors
Kristina G. Hopkins, Aditi S. Bhaskar, Sean Woznicki, Rosemary M. Fanelli
Prioritizing chemicals of ecological concern in Great Lakes tributaries using high-throughput screening data and adverse outcome pathways
Chemical monitoring data were collected in surface waters from 57 Great Lakes tributaries from 2010-13 to identify chemicals of potential biological relevance and sites at which these chemicals occur. Traditional water-quality benchmarks for aquatic life based on in vivo toxicity data were available for 34 of 67 evaluated chemicals. To expand evaluation of potential biological effects, measured ch
Authors
Steven R. Corsi, Laura A. DeCicco, Daniel L. Villeneuve, Brett Blackwell, Kellie Fay, Gerald Ankley, Austin K. Baldwin
Influence of land use and hydrologic variability on seasonal dissolved organic carbon and nitrate export: Insights from a multi-year regional analysis for the northeastern USA
Land use/land cover (LULC) change has significant impacts on nutrient loading to aquatic systems and has been linked to deteriorating water quality globally. While many relationships between LULC and nutrient loading have been identified, characterization of the interaction between LULC, climate (specifically variable hydrologic forcing) and solute export across seasonal and interannual time scale
Authors
Erin Seybold, Arthur J. Gold, Shreeram P. Inamdar, Carol Adair, W.B. Bowden, Matthew C.H. Vaughan, Soni M. Pradhanang, Kelly Addy, James B. Shanley, Andrew W. Vermilyea, Delphis F. Levia, Beverley Wemple, Andrew W. Schroth
Withdrawal and consumption of water by thermoelectric power plants in the United States, 2015
The U.S. Geological Survey has developed models to estimate thermoelectric water use based on linked heat and water budgets. The models produced plant-level withdrawal and consumption estimates using consistent methods for 1,122 water-using, utility-scale thermoelectric power plants in the United States for 2015. Total estimated withdrawal for 2015 was about 103 billion gallons per day (Bgal/d), a
Authors
Melissa A. Harris, Timothy H. Diehl
Water for Long Island: Now and for the future
Do you ever wonder where your water comes from? If you live in Nassau or Suffolk County, the answer is, groundwater. Groundwater is water that started out as precipitation (rain and snow melt) and seeped into the ground. This seepage recharges the freshwater stored underground, in the spaces between the grains of sand and gravel in what are referred to as aquifers. Long Island has three primary aq
Authors
John P. Masterson, Robert F. Breault
Groundwater/surface-water interactions along Ellerbe Creek in Durham, North Carolina, 2016–18
An assessment of groundwater/surface-water interactions along Ellerbe Creek, a major tributary to upper Falls Lake in Durham County, North Carolina, was conducted from July 2016 to March 2018 to determine if groundwater is a likely source of elevated nitrate input to the stream. Groundwater/surface-water interactions were characterized by synoptic streamflow measurements, groundwater-level monitor
Authors
Dominick J. Antolino
Spatial and temporal variation in river corridor exchange across a 5th order mountain stream network
Although most field and modeling studies of river corridor exchange have been conducted a scales ranging from 10’s to 100’s of meters; results of these studies are used to predict their ecological and hydrological influences at the scale of river networks. Further complicating prediction, exchanges are expected to vary with hydrologic forcing and the local geomorphic setting. While we desire predi
Authors
Adam S Ward, Steven Wondzell, Noah Schmadel, Skuyler Herzog, 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 L.A. 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, Catalina Segura, James Stegen, Jason Toyoda, Jacqueline Wells, Nathan Wisnoski
Hydrologic conditions in Kansas, water year 2018
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with Federal, State, and local agencies, maintains a long-term network of hydrologic monitoring stations in Kansas. In water year 2018, this network included 219 real-time streamgages. A water year is the 12-month period from October 1 through September 30 and is designated by the calendar year in which it ends. Real-time data are calibrated and validated
Authors
Angela H. Unrein