Publications
Browse more than 160,000 publications authored by our scientists over the past 100+ year history of the USGS. Publications available are: USGS-authored journal articles, series reports, book chapters, other government publications, and more.
Science Quality and Integrity
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.
Mission Area Publications
Mission Area Publications
We are focused on some of the most significant issues society faces, and our science is making a substantial contribution to the well-being of the Nation and the world. Learn more about the major topics our research covers and the programs focused on those topics.
Filter Total Items: 171158
Methane pore accessibility, densification, and accommodation by organic matter in the Niobrara Formation at wet-gas thermal maturity conditions
Petroleum within unconventional source-rock reservoirs is hosted in organic matter and mineral pore space as well as in voids and microfractures. Recent work has shown that for source-rock reservoirs in the dry gas window, significant portions of methane (CH4), the main component of petroleum at elevated maturities, can be stored within fine (<5 nm) organic matter porosity. However, within reservo
Authors
Aaron M. Jubb, Leslie F. Ruppert, Tristan G. A. Youngs, Tom Headen, Justin E. Birdwell, Michael Cheshire, Martha (Rebecca) Stokes
Exploring the interior of Europa with the Europa Clipper
The Galileo mission to Jupiter revealed that Europa is an ocean world. The Galileo magnetometer experiment in particular provided strong evidence for a salty subsurface ocean beneath the ice shell, likely in contact with the rocky core. Within the ice shell and ocean, a number of tectonic and geodynamic processes may operate today or have operated at some point in the past, including solid ice con
Authors
James Roberts, William B. McKinnon, Catherine Elder, Gabriel Tobie, John Biersteker, Duncan Young, Ryan S. Park, Gregor Steinbrügge, Francis Nimmo, Samuel Howell, Julie C. Castillo-Rogez, Morgan Cable, Jacob Abrahams, Michael T. Bland, Chase Chivers, Corey Cochrane, Andrew Dombard, Carolyn M. Ernst, Antonio Genova, Christopher Gerekos, Christopher R. Glein, Camilla Harris, Hamish Hay, Paul O. Hayne, Matthew Hedman, Hauke Hussmann, Xianzhe Jia, Krishan Khurana, Walter Kiefer, Randolph L. Kirk, Margaret Kivelson, Justin D. Lawrence, Erin J. Leonard, Jonathan Lunine, Erwan Mazarico, Thomas B. McCord, Alfred S. McEwen, Carol Paty, Lynnae Quick, Carol A. Raymond, Kurt Retherford, Lorenz Roth, Abigail Rymer, Joachim Saur, Kirk Scanlan, Dustin Schroeder, David Senske, Wencheng Shao, Krista Soderlund, Elizabeth Spiers, Marshall Styczinski, Paolo Tortora, Steven Vance, Michaela Villarreal, Benjamin Weiss, Joseph Westlake, Paul Withers, Natalie Wolfenbarger, Bonnie J. Buratti, Haje Korth, Robert Pappalardo, Interior Thematic Working Group
Macroscale analyses suggest invasive plant impacts depend more on the composition of invading plants than on environmental context
AimNative biodiversity is threatened by the spread of non-native invasive species. Many studies demonstrate that invasions reduce local biodiversity but we lack an understanding of how impacts vary across environments at the macroscale. Using ~11,500 vegetation surveys from ecosystems across the United States, we quantified how the relationship between non-native plant cover and native plant diver
Authors
Evelyn M. Beaury, Helen Sofaer, Regan Early, Ian Pearse, Dana M. Blumenthal, Jeffrey Corbin, Jeffrey M. Diez, Jeffrey Dukes, David Barnett, Ines Ibanez, Laís Petri, Montserrat Vilà, Bethany A. Bradley
Potential economic consequences along migratory flyways from reductions in breeding habitat of migratory waterbirds
The migration of species, often across continents, makes it difficult to quantify the cumulative effects of local- and regional-scale conservation actions. Further, variation in stakeholder interests, differing jurisdictional governance processes, priorities, and monitoring abilities across the migratory range shapes place-specific differences in management actions. These differences may lead mana
Authors
Wayne E. Thogmartin, James H. Devries, Darius J. Semmens, James E. Diffendorfer, James A. Dubovksy, Jonathan J. Derbridge, Brady J. Mattsson
Assessing contaminants of emerging concern in the Great Lakes Ecosystem: A decade of method development and practical application
Assessing the ecological risk of contaminants in the field typically involves consideration of a complex mixture of compounds which may or may not be detected via instrumental analyses. Further, there are insufficient data to predict the potential biological effects of many detected compounds, leading to their being characterized as contaminants of emerging concern (CECs). Over the past several ye
Authors
Gerald T. Ankley, Steven R. Corsi, Christine M. Custer, Drew R. Ekman, Stephanie L. Hummel, Kimani L. Kimbrough, Heiko L. Schoenfuss, Daniel L. Villeneuve
Earth’s mantle composition revealed by mantle plumes
Mantle plumes originate at depths near the core−mantle boundary (~2,800 km). As such, they provide invaluable information about the composition of the deep mantle and insight into convection, crustal formation, and crustal recycling, as well as global heat and volatile budgets. In this Review, we discuss the effectiveness and challenges of using isotopic analyses of plume-generated rocks to infer
Authors
Dominique Weis, Karen Harpp, Lauren N Harrison, Maud Boyet, Catherine Chauvel, Cinzia Farnetani, Val Finlayson, Kanai Lee, Rita Paraï, Anat Shahar, Nicole Williamson
Benefits and cautions in data assimilation strategies: An example of modeling groundwater recharge
Assimilating recent observations improves model outcomes for real-time assessments of groundwater processes. This is demonstrated in estimating time-varying recharge to a shallow fractured-rock aquifer in response to precipitation. Results from estimating the time-varying water-table altitude (h) and recharge, and their error covariances, are compared for forecasting, filtering, and fixed-lag smoo
Authors
Allen M. Shapiro, Frederick Day-Lewis
Carbon sequestration and subsidence reversal in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and Suisun Bay: Management opportunities for climate mitigation and adaptation
The aquatic landscapes of the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta (hereafter, the Delta) and Suisun Bay represent both a significant past and future soil carbon stock. Historical alterations of hydrologic flows have led to depletion of soil carbon stocks via emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), and loss of elevation as a result of subsidence. Optimizing ecosystem hydrology in the Delta and Suisun Bay could
Authors
Lisamarie Windham-Myers, Patty Oikawa, Steve Deverel, Dylan Chapple, Judith Z. Drexler, Dylan Stern
CGS: Coupled growth and survival model with cohort fairness
Fish modeling in complex environments is critical for understanding drivers of population dynamics in aquatic systems. This paper proposes a Bayesian network method for modeling fish survival and growth over multiple connected rivers. Traditional fish survival models capture the effect of multiple environmental drivers (e.g., stream temperature, stream flow) by adding different variables, which in
Authors
Erhu He, Yue Wan, Benjamin Letcher, Jennifer Burlingame Hoyle Fair, Yiquin Xie, Xiaowei Jia
The founding charter of the Omic Biodiversity Observation Network (Omic BON)
Omic BON is a thematic Biodiversity Observation Network under the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), focused on coordinating the observation of biomolecules in organisms and the environment. Our founding partners include representatives from national, regional, and global observing systems; standards organizations; and data and sample management infrastructures
Authors
Raissa Meyer, Neil Davies, Kathleen J. Pitz, Christopher Meyer, Robyn Samuel, Jane Anderson, Ward Appeltans, Katharine Barker, Francisco P. Chavez, J. Emmett Duffy, Kelly D. Goodwin, Maui Hudson, Maggie Hunter, Johannes Karstensen, Christine M. Laney, Margaret Leinen, Paula Mabee, James A. Macklin, Frank Muller-Karger, Nicolas Pade, Jay Pearlman, Lori Phillips, Pieter Provoost, Ioulia Santi, Dmitry Schigel, Lynn M. Schriml, Alice Soccodato, Saara Suominen, Katherine M. Thibault, Visotheary Ung, Jodie van de Kamp, Elycia Wallis, Ramona Walls, Pier Luigi Buttigieg
Modeling the water-quality effects to the Klamath River from recirculation in drains and canals, Oregon and California, 2006–15
The potential recirculation of Klamath Strait Drain (hereafter called by its local name, “Klamath Straits Drain”) water into Ady Canal to reduce the drain discharge of high nutrient loads into the Klamath River was assessed by the U.S. Geological Survey for the Bureau of Reclamation. To study the feasibility of recirculation, this investigation evaluated three recirculation scenarios over a 10-yea
Authors
Erik A. Smith, Annett B. Sullivan
Hydrogeology and simulated groundwater availability in reaches 3 and 4 of the Washita River aquifer, southern Oklahoma, 1980–2017
The 1973 Oklahoma Groundwater Law (Oklahoma Statutes §82–1020.5) requires that the Oklahoma Water Resources Board conduct hydrologic investigations of the State’s aquifers to determine the maximum annual yield for each groundwater basin. Because more than 20 years have elapsed since the final order was issued, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Oklahoma Water Resources Board, cond
Authors
Ian M.J. Rogers, S. Jerrod Smith, Nicole C. Gammill, Natalie J. Gillard, Kayla A. Lockmiller, Evin J. Fetkovich, Jessica S. Correll, Sean P. Hussey