Publications

Spatiotemporal variations in reference evapotranspiration (ETo) are sensitive to the meteorological data used in its estimation. The sensitivity of the ASCE standardized ETo equation to meteorological variables from GOES-PRWEB dataset was evaluated for the island of Puerto Rico. Island wide, ETo is most sensitive to daily mean relative humidity (RHmean), followed by solar radiation, daily maximum

The use of field deployable fluorescence sensors by the U.S. Geological Survey has become increasingly common for a wide variety of surface water and groundwater investigations. This report addresses field deployable fluorometers that measure the fluorescence response of various substances in water exposed to incident light generated by the sensor. An introduction to the basic principles of field

An illustrated diagram of the water cycle. This is a modern, updated version of the widely used diagram featured on the USGS Water Science School. Notably, this new water cycle diagram depicts humans and major categories of human water use as key components of the water cycle, in addition to the key pools and fluxes of the hydrologic cycle. This product targets an 8th grade audience and is designe

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District, is deepening the St. Johns River channel in Jacksonville, Florida, by 7 feet along 13 miles of the river channel beginning at the mouth of the river at the Atlantic Ocean, in order to accommodate larger, fully loaded cargo vessels. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, monitored stage, discharge, a

In 2019, the U.S. Geological Survey evaluated the performance of the Turner Designs, Inc. PhytoFind, an in-place phytoplankton classification tool. The sensor was tested with sample blanks, monoculture and mixed phytoplankton cultures, and turbidity challenges in a laboratory, and was tested on a 120-mile survey of the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers in Florida, including Lake Okeechobee. Resu

We describe two larger benthic foraminiferal taxa collected from wells drilled in the subsurface Eocene rocks of southeastern Florida that are new to peninsular Florida and the Caribbean region. Saudia floridana n.sp. is characteristic of a foraminiferal assemblage, along with Helicostegina gyralis, wide forms of the Cushmania americana group, and Gunteria floridana, in an upper part of the Oldsma

In 2012, the Florida Legislature mandated that the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS), Office of Agricultural Water Policy, promote an agricultural water-conservation program that would include a cost-share program and best management practices and that would aid the five water management districts in the development of consistent agricultural water-supply planning, as

Levittown Lake is a 30-hectare, brackish waterbody located in the municipality of Toa Baja, on the northern coast of Puerto Rico. The lake is a small, man-made feature formed by draining the marshland over which the Levittown community was built. Levittown Lake has an average depth of about 5 meters and a water level at/near mean sea level. Tidal oscillations within the lake were minimal during th

The Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) was used to develop a simulation of watershed hydrology on the island of Puerto Rico for the period 1981–2017, concentrating on the Río Grande de Arecibo, a river with some of the highest streamflows on the island. This development is part of the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) National Hydrologic Model (NHM) infrastructure which supports coordinated

Planning stormwater projects requires estimates of current and future extreme precipitation depths for events with specified return periods and durations. In this study, precipitation data from four downscaled climate datasets are used to determine changes in precipitation depth-duration-frequency curves from the period 1966–2005 to the period 2050–89 primarily on the basis of Representative Conce

Executive SummarySoutheast Florida is highly susceptible to flooding because of its low topography and porous, highly permeable Biscayne aquifer. Rising seas will likely result in increased groundwater levels in parts of Broward County, Florida, that will reduce available soil storage and therefore increase the likelihood of inundation and flooding from precipitation events. Moreover, rising seas

Land subsidence is a settling, sinking, or collapse of the land surface. In the southeastern United States, subsidence is frequently observed as sinkhole collapse in karst environments, wetland degradation and loss in coastal and other low-lying areas, and inundation of coastal urban communities. Human activities such as fluid extraction, mining, and overburden alteration can cause or exacerbate s