Book Chapters
Science Quality and Integrity
The USGS provides unbiased, objective, and impartial scientific information upon which our audiences, including resource managers, planners, and other entities, rely.
The USGS provides unbiased, objective, and impartial scientific information upon which our audiences, including resource managers, planners, and other entities, rely.
Browse more than 5,500 book chapters authored by our scientists over the past 100+ year history of the USGS and refine search by topic, location, year, and advanced search.
Filter Total Items: 6063
Design and implementation of the National Water-Quality Assessment Program: a United States example: understanding the limitations of using compliance-monitoring data to assess the water quality of a large river basin
In the 1980s it was determined that existing ambient and compliance-monitoring data could not satisfactorily evaluate the results of hundreds of billions of dollars spent for water-pollution abatement in the United States. At the request of the US Congress, a new programme, the National Water-Quality Assessment, was designed and implemented by government agency, the US Geological Survey (USGS). Th
Authors
David J. Wangsness
Natural chemical attenuation of halogenated compounds via dehalogenation
No abstract available.
Authors
Martin Reinhard, G.P. Curtis, J.E. Barbash
Age and origin of the Austell Gneiss, western Georgia Piedmont-Blue Ridge, and its bearing on the ages of orogenic events in the Southern Appalachians
No abstract available.
Authors
Michael W. Higgins, Joseph G. Arth, Joseph L. Wooden, Thomas J. Crawford, Thomas W. Stern, Ralph Crawford
Age and correlation of tephra layers, position of the Matuyama-Brunhes chron boundary, and effects of Bishop Ash eruption on Owens Lake, as determined from drill hole OL-92, Southeast California
Tephra layers in the ~323-m-deep Owens lake drill hole OL-92 correlate to tephra layers that have been identified and dated elsewhere in the western United States. Tephra layers identified are the Bishop ash bed (758 ka) at 309.2–298.6 m; the Dibekulewe (ash) bed (ca. 470 ka to ca. 610 ka) at ~224 m; and one of several ash beds in Walker Lake (ca. 60 ka to ca. 80 ka) at ~50.7 m. Other tephra layer
Authors
Andrei M. Sarna-Wojcicki, Charles E. Meyer, Elmira Wan
Synthesis of the paleoclimatic record from Owens Lake core OL-92
During much of the late Quaternary, Owens Lake overflowed into one or more of four successively lower-elevation basins. Most of the water came from the high, eastern slopes of the southern Sierra Nevada, and changes in the volumes of that water reflect a dominant climatic cycle of ~100 k.y. Variations in the inflow to, and outflow from, Owens Lake since ca. 800 ka left biological, chemical, minera
Authors
George I. Smith, James L. Bischoff, J. Platt Bradbury
An 800,000-year pollen record from Owens Lake, California: Preliminary analyses
A long sequence of fossil palynomorph assemblages from a 323-m-long core taken at Owens Lake has enabled us to evaluate the gross vegetational trends for the Owens Valley region of California over the past ~800,000 years. Shifts in vegetation composition and abundance in the study area during the Pleistocene were indicated in core sediments by marked fluctuations in the pollen frequencies of pines
Authors
Ronald J. Litwin, D.P. Adam, N. O. Frederiksen, W. B. Woolfenden
In situ and laboratory methods to study subsurface microbial transport
No abstract available.
Authors
Ronald W. Harvey
Paleobiotic and isotopic analysis of mollusks, fish and plants from core OL-92: Indicators for an open or closed lake system
Intervals of open versus closed lake systems for Pleistocene Owens Lake in California are suggested by a comparison of paleobiotic and isotopic evidence recovered from core samples of OL-92. Mollusks and fish were identified from 67 core samples, and their ecological requirements were noted. Carbon dioxide extractions for stable isotopes of 13C and 18O from aragonite of the molluscan shell materia
Authors
James R. Firby, Saxon E. Sharpe, Joseph F. Whelan, Gerald R. Smith, W. Geoffrey Spaulding
Ostracodes in Owens Lake core OL-92: Alteration of saline and freshwater forms through time
Ostracode species’ geographic distributions are limited by parameters such as water temperature, salinity, and dissolved-ion composition. Because these parameters are, in part, determined by climate, ostracode biogeographic distributions serve as proxies for past climates. Therefore, the ostracodes in Core OL-92 from Owens Lake, southeast California, reveal climatic oscillations during the past 80
Authors
Claire Carter
A diatom-based paleohydrologic record of climate change for the past 800 k.y. from Owens Lake, California
A 323-m (~800 k.y.) core of lake deposits beneath Owens Lake playa, Inyo County, California, contains a nearly continuous paleolimnological record based on diatom assemblages. The core chronology is anchored by the Matuyama/Brunhes magnetostratigraphic boundary and the Bishop ash near the base of the record and by radiocarbon dates near the top. Throughout most of its history, Owens Lake was chara
Authors
J. Platt Bradbury
Broad-scale climatic influences on rainfall thresholds for debris flows: Adapting thresholds for northern California to southern California
A Landslide Warning System (LWS) operated in the San Francisco Bay region until late 1995. The LWS issued public advisories when rainfall conditions reached or approached critical levels for triggering debris flows ("mudslides"). Interest in an LWS for southern California was revived by the destructive landslides triggered by the storms of January and February 1993 and by the debris-flow problems
Authors
Raymond C. Wilson