Publications

Hydrological models are usually calibrated to in-situ streamflow observations with reasonably long and uninterrupted records. This is challenging for poorly gage or ungaged basins where such information is not available. Even for gaged basins, the single-objective calibration to gaged streamflow cannot guarantee reliable forecasts because, as has been documented elsewhere, the inverse problem is m

The Kansas River and its associated alluvial aquifer provide drinking water to more than 950,000 people in northeastern Kansas. Water suppliers that rely on the Kansas River as a water-supply source use physical and chemical processes to treat and remove contaminants before public distribution. An early-notification system of changing water-quality conditions allows water suppliers to proactively

Phytoplankton is the essential primary producer in fresh surface water ecosystems. However, excessive phytoplankton growth due to eutrophication significantly threatens ecologic, economic, and public health. Therefore, phytoplankton identification and quantification are essential to understanding the productivity and health of freshwater ecosystems as well as the impacts of phytoplankton overgrowt

Improvements in timber harvest practices and reductions in harvest volumes over the past half century are commonly presumed to have reduced sediment loads in many western US rivers. However, direct assessments in larger watersheds are relatively sparse. Here, we compare 2019–21 sediment concentrations against those of the late 1970s in the Bogachiel and Calawah  River watersheds, adjacent and simi

The Riverton Processing site was a uranium mill 4 kilometers southwest of Riverton, Wyoming, that prepared uranium ore for nuclear reactors and weapons from 1958 to 1963. The U.S. Department of Energy completed surface remediation of the uranium tailings in 1989; however, groundwater below and downgradient from the tailings site and nearby Little Wind River was not remediated. Beginning in 2010, a

A three-dimensional numerical model of groundwater flow was developed and calibrated for the unconsolidated New Jersey Coastal Plain aquifers underlying Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst (JBMDL) and vicinity, New Jersey, to evaluate groundwater flow pathways of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination associated with use of aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) at the base. The regional

In 2021, the U.S. Geological Survey will collect water-quality samples and environmental data from 3 sites in Koocanusa Reservoir and from 1 site in the Kootenai River. The transboundary Koocanusa Reservoir is in southeastern British Columbia, Canada, and northwestern Montana, United States, and was formed with the construction of Libby Dam on the Kootenai River 26 kilometers upstream from Libby,

The use of moving boat ADCPs (Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers) for discharge measurements requires identification of the sources and magnitude of uncertainty to ensure accurate measurements. Recently, a tool known as QUant was developed to estimate the contribution to the uncertainty estimates for each transect of moving-boat ADCP discharge measurements, by varying different sampling configurat

Fish communities of the Mohawk River and associated sections of the New York State Canal System have been well documented but little information is available regarding the status of fish communities in the extensive network of tributaries that feed the Mohawk River. This lack of information is problematic because changes in species distributions or general ecosystem health may go unnoticed in the

While recent efforts to catalogue Earth’s microbial diversity have focused upon surface and marine habitats, 12–20 % of Earth’s biomass is suggested to exist in the terrestrial deep subsurface, compared to ~1.8 % in the deep subseafloor. Metagenomic studies of the terrestrial deep subsurface have yielded a trove of divergent and functionally important microbiomes from a range of localities. Howeve

Chloramination is being used increasingly in water treatment to lower the formation of regulated disinfection byproducts (DBPs). How monochloramine nitrogen becomes incorporated into aquatic natural organic matter (NOM) and potentially affects the formation of nitrogenous DBPs is an unresolved question in the chemistry of humic substances. To address the problem, Suwannee River NOM and Suwannee Ri