Publications

Many National Wildlife Refuges (Refuges) have impaired water quality resulting from historic and current land uses, upstream sources, and aerial pollutant deposition. Competing duties limit the time available for Refuge staff to identify and evaluate potential water quality issues. As a result, water quality–related issues may not be resolved until a problem has already arisen. This...

The Meramec River Basin in east-central Missouri is an important stronghold for native freshwater mussels (Order: Unionoida) in the United States. Whereas the basin supports more than 40 mussel species, previous studies indicate that the abundance and distribution of most species are declining. Therefore, resource managers have identified the need to prioritize threats to native mussel...

The Washington Department of Ecology annually determines the quality of recently deposited sediments in Puget Sound as a part of Ecology's Urban Waters Initiative. The annual sediment quality studies use the Sediment Quality Triad (SQT) approach, thus relying on measures of chemical contamination, toxicity, and benthic in-faunal effects (Chapman, 1990). Since 2002, the studies followed a...

Pore water from coastal beach and marsh sediments from the northern Gulf of Mexico, pre- and post-landfall of the Deepwater Horizon oil release, were collected and evaluated for toxicity with the sea urchin fertilization and embryological development assays. There were 17 pre-landfall samples and 49 post-landfall samples tested using both assays. Toxicity was determined in four pre...

This report presents a summary of geomorphic characteristics extracted from aerial imagery for three broad segments of the Lower Platte River. This report includes a summary of the longitudinal multivariate classification in Elliott and others (2009) and presents a new analysis of total channel width and habitat variables. Three segments on the lower 102.8 miles of the Lower Platte River...

New and existing data were used to describe and map vegetation communities at Big Muddy National Fish and Wildlife Refuge. Existing data had been gathered during the growing seasons of 2002, 2003, and 2004. New data were collected in 2007 to describe previously unsampled communities and communities within which insufficient data had been collected. Plot data and field observations were...

Three sets of effects-based sediment-quality guidelines (SQGs) were evaluated to support the selection of sediment-quality benchmarks for assessing risks to benthic invertebrates in the Calcasieu Estuary, Louisiana. These SQGs included probable effect concentrations (PECs), effects range median values (ERMs), and logistic regression model (LRMs)-based T50 values. The results of this...

Herbicide use has increased dramatically around the world over the past 6 decades (Gianessi and Reigner, 2007). Few herbicides were in use in the 1950s. However, by 2001 approximately 1.14 billion kilograms of herbicides were applied globally for the control of undesireable vegetation in agricultural, silvicultural, lawncare, aquacultural, and irrigation/recreational water management...

Using an automated shuttlebox system, we conducted patch choice experiments with 32, 8–12 g bluegill sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus) to test a behavioral energetics hypothesis of habitat choice. When patch temperature and food levels were held constant within patches but different between patches, we expected bluegill to choose patches that maximized growth based on the bioenergetic...

Approaches using telemetry, precise reproductive assessments, and surgically implanted data storage tags (DSTs) were used in combination with novel applications of analytical techniques for fish movement studies to describe patterns in migratory behavior and predict spawning success of gravid shovelnose sturgeon. From 2004 to 2007, over 300 gravid female shovelnose sturgeon...

A draft update of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ambient water quality criteria (AWQC) for ammonia substantially lowers the ammonia AWQC, primarily due to the inclusion of toxicity data for freshwater mussels. However, most of the mussel data used in the updated AWQC were generated from water-only exposures and limited information is available on the potential influence of the...

A national dataset on concentrations of mercury in fish, compiled mainly from state and federal monitoring programs, was used to evaluate trends in mercury (Hg) in fish from US rivers and lakes. Trends were analyzed on data aggregated by site and by state, using samples of the same fish species and tissue type, and using fish of similar lengths. Site-based trends were evaluated from 1969...