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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: 18468

PESTools – A Python toolkit for processing PEST-related information

PESTools is an open-source Python package for processing and visualizing information associated with the parameter estimation software PEST and PEST++. While PEST output can be reformatted for post- processing in spreadsheets or other menu-driven software packages, that approach can be error-prone and time-consuming. Managing information from highly parameterized models with thousands of parameter
Authors
Evan Christianson, Andrew T. Leaf

Optimization techniques using MODFLOW-GWM

An important application of optimization codes such as MODFLOW-GWM is to maximize water supply from unconfined aquifers subject to constraints involving surface-water depletion and drawdown. In optimizing pumping for a fish hatchery in a bedrock aquifer system overlain by glacial deposits in eastern Wisconsin, various features of the GWM-2000 code were used to overcome difficulties associated with
Authors
Anna Grava, Daniel T. Feinstein, Paul M. Barlow, Tullia Bonomi, Fabiola Buarne, Charles Dunning, Randall J. Hunt

Groundwater conditions in Utah, spring of 2015

This is the fifty-second in a series of annual reports that describe groundwater conditions in Utah. Reports in this series, published cooperatively by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Utah Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water Rights, and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Water Quality, provide data to enable interested parties to maintain awareness of chang
Authors
Carole B. Burden

Origins and bioavailability of dissolved organic matter in groundwater

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) in groundwater influences water quality and fuels microbial metabolism, but its origins, bioavailability and chemical composition are poorly understood. The origins and concentrations of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and bioavailable DOM were monitored during a long-term (2-year) study of groundwater in a fractured-rock aquifer in the Carolina slate belt. Surface pr
Authors
Yuan Shen, Francis H. Chapelle, Eric W. Strom, Ronald Benner

Net ecosystem production and organic carbon balance of U.S. East Coast estuaries: A synthesis approach

Net ecosystem production (NEP) and the overall organic carbon budget for the estuaries along the East Coast of the United States are estimated. We focus on the open estuarine waters, excluding the fringing wetlands. We developed empirical models relating NEP to loading ratios of dissolved inorganic nitrogen to total organic carbon, and carbon burial in the sediment to estuarine water residence tim
Authors
Maria Herrmann, Raymond G. Najjar, W. Michael Kemp, Richard B. Alexander, Elizabeth W. Boyer, Wei-Jun Cai, Peter C. Griffith, Kevin D. Kroeger, S. Leigh McCallister, Richard A. Smith

Effects of groundwater pumping on agricultural drains in the Tule Lake subbasin, Oregon and California

Since 2001, irrigators in the upper Klamath Basin have increasingly turned to groundwater to compensate for reductions in surface-water allocation caused by shifts from irrigation use to instream flows for Endangered Species Act listed fishes. The largest increase in groundwater pumping has been in and around the Bureau of Reclamation’s Klamath Irrigation Project, which includes the Tule Lake subb
Authors
Esther M. Pischel, Marshall W. Gannett

Vegetation composition, nutrient, and sediment dynamics along a floodplain landscape

Forested floodplains are important landscape features for retaining river nutrients and sediment loads but there is uncertainty in how vegetation influences nutrient and sediment retention. In order to understand the role of vegetation in nutrient and sediment trapping, we quantified species composition and the uptake of nutrients in plant material relative to landscape position and ecosystem attr
Authors
Nancy B. Rybicki, Gregory Noe, Cliff R. Hupp, Myles Robinson

2013 Monitoring and tracking wet nitrogen deposition at Rocky Mountain National Park

In 2004, multiple agencies including the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), the National Park Service (NPS), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) met to address the effects and trends of nitrogen deposition and related air quality issues at Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP). These agencies signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to facilitate inte
Authors
Kristi Morris, M. Alisa Mast, David W. Clow, Gregory A. Wetherbee, Jill Baron, Curt Taipale, Tamara Blett, David A. Gay, Daniel Bowker

Carbon isotope analysis of dissolved organic carbon in fresh and saline (NaCl) water via continuous flow cavity ring-down spectroscopy following wet chemical oxidation

This work examines the performance and limitations of a wet chemical oxidation carbon analyser interfaced with a cavity ring-down spectrometer (WCO-CRDS) in a continuous flow (CF) configuration for measuring δ13C of dissolved organic carbon (δ13C-DOC) in natural water samples. Low-chloride matrix (<5 g Cl/L) DOC solutions were analysed with as little as 2.5 mg C/L in a 9 mL aliquot with a precisio
Authors
Christopher Conaway, Randal B. Thomas, Nabil Saad, James J. Thordsen, Yousif K. Kharaka

Discrete-storm water-table fluctuation method to estimate episodic recharge.

We have developed a method to identify and quantify recharge episodes, along with their associated infiltration-related inputs, by a consistent, systematic procedure. Our algorithm partitions a time series of water levels into discrete recharge episodes and intervals of no episodic recharge. It correlates each recharge episode with a specific interval of rainfall, so storm characteristics such as
Authors
John R. Nimmo, Charles Horowittz, Lara Mitchell

Sharp increase in central Oklahoma seismicity 2009-2014 induced by massive wastewater injection

Unconventional oil and gas production provides a rapidly growing energy source; however high-producing states in the United States, such as Oklahoma, face sharply rising numbers of earthquakes. Subsurface pressure data required to unequivocally link earthquakes to injection are rarely accessible. Here we use seismicity and hydrogeological models to show that distant fluid migration from high-rate
Authors
Kathleen M. Keranen, Geoffrey A. Abers, Matthew Weingarten, Barbara A. Bekins, Shemin Ge
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