Conference Papers

Human land use will increasingly contribute to habitat loss and water shortages in California, given future population projections and associated land-use demand. Understanding how land-use change may impact future water use and where existing protected areas may be threatened by land-use conversion will be important if effective, sustainable management approaches are to be implemented. We used a

On 4 September 2010, a Mw7.1 earthquake occurred in Canterbury, New Zealand. Following the initial earthquake, an aftershock sequence was initiated, with the most significant aftershock being a Mw6.3 earthquake occurring on 22 February 2011. This aftershock caused severe damage to the city of Christchurch and building failures that killed 185 people. During the aftershock sequence it became eviden

Advanced borehole-geophysical methods were used to investigate the hydrogeology of the crystalline bedrock in three boreholes on Roosevelt Island, New York County, New York. Cornell University was evaluating the feasibility of using geothermal energy for a future campus at the site. The borehole-logging techniques were used to delineate bedrock fractures, foliation, and groundwater-flow zones of t

Fifty years ago, infectious diseases were rarely considered threats to wildlife populations, and the study of wildlife diseases was largely a neglected endeavor. Furthermore, public health leaders at that time had declared that “it is time to close the book on infectious diseases and the war against pestilence won,” a quote attributed to Dr. William H. Stewart in 1967. There is some debate whether

Large-scale land uses such as residential wastewater discharge and coal mining practices, particularly surface coal extraction and associated valley fills, are of particular ecological concern in central Appalachia. Identification and quantification of both alterations across scales are a necessary first-step to mitigate negative consequences to biota. In central Appalachian headwater streams abse

Pyrite and other minerals containing sulfur and trace metals occur in several rock formations throughout Middle and East Tennessee. Pyrite (FeS2) weathers in the presence of oxygen and water to form iron hydroxides and sulfuric acid. The weathering and interaction of the acid on the rocks and other minerals at road cuts can result in drainage with low pH (< 4) and high concentrations of trace meta

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is the largest delta on the west coast of the United States. It is formed where the confluence of California’s two largest rivers (the Sacramento and San Joaquin) meet the ocean tides and has a significant physical gradient from fluvial to tidal. It is a semidiurnal system (two high and two low tides per day). Today, the Delta is one of the most manipulated in the

Preliminary experimental surveys of the flow of dilute mixtures of ice plus hard particulates under planetary conditions indicate a strengthening effect with respect to pure ice, but with dependencies on environmental conditions (temperature, stress, grain size) that vary widely from study to study [1-4]. With the expectation that the textural character of the particulate fraction (size, shape, sp

An international workgroup was recently formed for hydraulic laboratory testing and verification of hydroacoustic instrumentation used for water velocity measurements. The activities of the workgroup have included one face to face meeting, conference calls and an inter-laboratory exchange of two acoustic meters among participating laboratories. Good agreement was found among four laboratories at h

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, California, (Delta) has been significantly altered since the mid-nineteenth century. Many existing channels have been widened or deepened and new channels have been created for navigation and water conveyance. Tidal marshes have been drained and leveed to form islands that have subsided, some of which have permanently flooded. To understand how these alterations h

Landslide studies by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are focused on two main objectives: scientific understanding and forecasting. The first objective is to gain better understanding of the physical processes involved in landslide initiation and movement. This objective is largely in support of the second objective, to develop predictive capabilities to answer the main hazard questions. Answers

Increased levels of seismicity coinciding with injection of reservoir fluids have prompted interest in methods to distinguish induced from natural seismicity. Discrimination between induced and natural seismicity is especially difficult in areas that have high levels of natural seismicity, such as the geothermal fields at the Salton Sea and Coso, both in California. Both areas show swarm-like sequ