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: 18422
River channel response to the removal of the Pilchuck River Diversion Dam, Washington State
In August 2020, the 3-m tall Pilchuck River Diversion Dam was removed from the Pilchuck River, allowing free fish passage to the upper third of the watershed for the first time in over a century. The narrow, 300-m long impoundment behind the dam was estimated to hold 4,000–7,500 m3 of sand and gravel, representing less than one year's typical bedload flux. Repeat cross section surveys, stage senso
Authors
Scott W. Anderson, Brett Shattuck, Neil Shea, Catherine M. Seguin, Joe J. Miles, Derek Marks, Natasha Coumou
Solute export patterns across the contiguous USA
Understanding controls on solute export to streams is challenging because heterogeneous catchments can respond uniquely to drivers of environmental change. To understand general solute export patterns, we used a large-scale inductive approach to evaluate concentration–discharge (C–Q) metrics across catchments spanning a broad range of catchment attributes and hydroclimatic drivers. We leveraged pa
Authors
Dustin W. Kincaid, Kristen L. Underwood, Scott Douglas Hamshaw, L. Li, Erin C. Seybold, Bryn Stewart, Donna M. Rizzo, Ijaz Ul Haq, Julia N. Perdrial
Diel temperature signals track seasonal shifts in localized groundwater contributions to headwater streamflow generation at network scale
Groundwater contributions to streamflow sustain aquatic ecosystem resilience; streams without significant groundwater inputs often have well-coupled air and water temperatures that degrade cold-water habitat during warm low flow periods. Widespread uncertainty in stream-groundwater connectivity across space and time has created disparate predictions of energy and nutrient fluxes across headwater n
Authors
David Rey, Danielle K. Hare, Jennifer Burlingame Hoyle Fair, Martin Briggs
Accuracy assessment of three-dimensional point cloud data collected with a scanning total station on Shinnecock Nation Tribal lands in Suffolk County, New York
A combined point cloud of about 85.6 million points was collected during 27 scans of a section of the western shoreline along the Shinnecock Peninsula of Suffolk County, New York, to document baseline geospatial conditions during July and October 2022 using a scanning total station. The three-dimensional accuracy of the combined point cloud is assessed to identify potential systematic error source
Authors
Michael L. Noll, William D. Capurso, Anthony Chu
Groundwater, surface-water, and water-chemistry data, Black Mesa area, northeastern Arizona—2019–2021
The Navajo (N) aquifer is an extensive aquifer and the primary source of groundwater in the 5,400-square-mile Black Mesa area in northeastern Arizona. Water availability is an important issue in the Black Mesa area because of the arid climate, past industrial water use, and continued water requirements for municipal use by a growing population. Precipitation in the area typically ranges from less
Authors
Jon P. Mason
Chlorophyll a in lakes and streams of the United States (2005–2022)
The concentration of chlorophyll a in phytoplankton and periphyton represents the amount of algal biomass. We compiled an 18-year record (2005–2022) of pigment data from water bodies across the United States (US) to support efforts to develop process-based, machine learning, and remote sensing models for prediction of harmful algal blooms (HABs). To our knowledge, this dataset of nearly 84,000 sit
Authors
Sarah Spaulding, Lindsay R.C. Platt, Jennifer C. Murphy, S. Alex Covert, Judson Harvey
Environmental monitoring of groundwater, surface water, and soil at the Ammonium Perchlorate Rocket Motor Destruction Facility at the Letterkenny Army Depot, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, 2021
Letterkenny Army Depot in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, built an Ammonium Perchlorate Rocket Motor Destruction (ARMD) Facility in 2016 to centralize rocket motor destruction and contain all waste during the destruction process. The U.S. Geological Survey has collected environmental samples from groundwater, surface water, and soils at ARMD since 2016.During 2021, samples were collected from four gro
Authors
Daniel G. Galeone, Shaun J. Donmoyer
Distribution of ancient carbon in groundwater and soil gas from degradation of petroleum near the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, O‘ahu, Hawai‘i
The groundwater below the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility (the facility) in Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, contains fuel compounds from past spills. This study used carbon-14 analyses to distinguish fuel-derived carbon from background carbon, along with other biodegradation indicators, to address two goals: (1) determine the extent and migration direction of groundwater affected by residual fuel below the fa
Authors
Jared J. Trost, Barbara A. Bekins, Jeanne B. Jaeschke, Geoffrey N. Delin, Daniel A Sinclair, James K Stack, Rylen K. Nakama, Uli'i M. Miyajima, Lhiberty D. Pagaduan, Isabelle M. Cozzarelli
Potential hazards of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in Great Lakes tributaries using water column and porewater passive samplers and sediment wquilibrium partitioning
The potential for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH)-related effects in benthic organisms is commonly estimated from organic carbon-normalized sediment concentrations based on equilibrium partitioning (EqP). Although this approach is useful for screening purposes, it may overestimate PAH bioavailability by orders of magnitude in some sediments, leading to inflated exposure estimates and potenti
Authors
Austin K. Baldwin, Steven R. Corsi, David Alvarez, David L. Villeneuve, Gerald T. Ankley, Brett R. Blackwell, Marc A. Mills, Peter L. Lenaker, Michelle A. Nott
Streamflow, water quality, and constituent loads and yields, Scituate Reservoir drainage area, Rhode Island, water year 2020
As part of a long-term cooperative program to monitor water quality within the Scituate Reservoir drainage area, the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with Providence Water (sometimes known as Providence Water Supply Board) collected streamflow and water-quality data in tributaries to the Scituate Reservoir, Rhode Island. Streamflow and concentrations of chloride and sodium estimated from reco
Authors
Kirk P. Smith
Climate change scenarios for air and water temperatures in the upper San Francisco Estuary: Implications for thermal regimes and Delta Smelt
Climate projections and their effects in the San Francisco Estuary have been evaluated as part of the US Geological Survey’s CASCaDE2 project. Understanding the ecological effects of climate change can help manage and maintain the ecological health and productivity of the San Francisco Estuary. In this study, we assessed downscaled air temperature data from 10 global climate models (GCMs) under tw
Authors
Brock Huntsman, Larry R. Brown, Marissa L. Wulff, Noah Knowles, R. Wayne Wagner, Frederick V. Feyrer
Taking heat (downstream): Simulating groundwater and thermal equilibrium controls on annual paired air–water temperature signal transport in headwater streams
Headwater stream temperature often exhibits spatial variation at the kilometer-scale, but the relative importance of the underlying hydrogeological processes and riverine perturbations remains poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the relative importance of groundwater (GW) and other processes on downstream annual stream temperature signal characteristics using deterministic heat budge
Authors
Zachary Johnson, Martin Briggs, Craig D. Snyder, Brittany G. Johnson, Nathaniel Hitt