Publications

Extraction of oil and gas from unconventional sources, such as shale, has dramatically increased over the past ten years, raising the potential for spills or releases of chemicals, waste materials, and oil and gas. We analyzed spill data associated with unconventional wells from Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota and Pennsylvania from 2005 to 2014, where we defined unconventional wells as horizont

Rapid growth in unconventional oil and gas (UOG) has produced jobs, revenue, and energy, but also concerns over spills and environmental risks. We assessed spill data from 2005 to 2014 at 31 481 UOG wells in Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania. We found 2–16% of wells reported a spill each year. Median spill volumes ranged from 0.5 m3 in Pennsylvania to 4.9 m3 in New Mexico; the l

IntroductionCongress directed the Federal Government to work with States to restore the Nation’s largest estuary.Chesapeake Bay restoration provides important economic and ecological benefits:18 million people live and work in the Bay watershed and enjoy its benefits.3,600 types of fish, wildlife, and plants underpin the economic value of the Bay ecosystem.Poor water quality and habitat loss threa

The occurrence of arsenic and uranium in groundwater at concentrations that exceed drinking-water standards is a concern because of the potential adverse effects on human health. Some early studies of arsenic occurrence in groundwater considered anthropogenic causes, but more recent studies have focused on sources of naturally occurring arsenic to groundwater, such as minerals within aquifer mater

The U.S. Geological Survey National Minerals Information Center (NMIC) is the U.S. Government agency tasked with the collection, analysis, and dissemination of information on the production, consumption, import, export, and other measures of the flows of non-fuel mineral commodities of importance to the U.S. economy and national security. The NMIC and its agency predecessors have maintained a data

This paper outlines strategies that would advance coastal ocean modelling, analysis and prediction as a complement to the observing and data management activities of the coastal components of the US Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS®) and the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS). The views presented are the consensus of a group of US-based researchers with a cross-section of coastal oceanogr

The time at which the Laurentide Ice Sheet reached its maximum extent and subsequently retreated from its terminal moraine in New Jersey has been constrained by bracketing radiocarbon ages on preglacial and postglacial sediments. Here, we present measurements of in situ produced 10Be and 26Al in 16 quartz-bearing samples collected from bedrock outcrops and glacial erratics just north of the termin

Droughts, which can strongly affect both hydrologic and biogeochemical systems, are projected to become more prevalent in the tropics in the future. We assessed the effects of an extreme drought during 2015 on stream water composition in the Luquillo Mountains of Puerto Rico. We demonstrated that drought base flow in the months leading up to the study was sourced from trade-wind orographic rainfal

We assessed > 100 years of mercury (Hg) pollution recorded in the tree rings of Scots Pine near a Czech chlor-alkali plant operating since 1941. Hg concentrations in tree rings increased with the launching of plant operations and decreased when Hg emissions decreased in 1975 due to an upgrade in production technology. Similar to traditional bioindicators of pollution such as pine needles, bark and

This article describes a study of PIT-tagged sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) ascending four fishways comprising three designs at two dams on the Connecticut River, USA. Migration between dams was rapid (median migration rate = 23 km·day−1). Movement through the fishways was much slower, however (median = 0.02–0.33 km·day−1). Overall delay at dams was substantial (median = 13.6–14.6 days); many fi

A probabilistic mineral resource assessment of metal resources in undiscovered porphyry copper deposits of the Ural Mountains in Russia and Kazakhstan was done using a quantitative form of mineral resource assessment. Permissive tracts were delineated on the basis of mapped and inferred subsurface distributions of igneous rocks assigned to tectonic zones that include magmatic arcs where the occurr

Periodic assessments of population trends and changes in spatial distribution are valuable for managing marine birds and their breeding habitats, particularly when evaluating long-term response to threats such as oil spills, predation pressure, and changing ocean conditions. We evaluated recent trends in abundance and distribution of the Common Murre Uria aalge within Copalis, Quillayute Needles,