Publications

Toxicity tests are commonly conducted as a measure of the bioavailability of toxic chemicals to biota in an environment. Chemical analyses alone are insufficient to determine whether contaminants pose a threat to biota. Porewater toxicity tests are extremely sensitive to a broad range of contaminants in marine environments and provide ecologically relevant data on sensitive life stages...

Recently, we have witnessed an explosion of different genomic approaches that, through a combination of advanced biological, instrumental, and bioinformatic techniques, can yield a previously unparalleled amount of data concerning the molecular and biochemical status of organisms. Fueled partially by large, well-publicized efforts such as the Human Genome Project, genomic research has...

Extensive efforts are underway along the Lower Missouri River to rehabilitate ecosystem functions in the channel and flood plain. Considerable uncertainty inevitably accompanies ecosystem restoration efforts, indicating the benefits of an adaptive management approach in which management actions are treated as experiments, and results provide information to feed back into the management...

The effects of feeding ranch mink (Mustela vison) diets containing polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)-contaminated fish (88 gold fish [Carassius auratus] weighing a total of 70.3 kg and 16 carp [Cyprinus carpio] weighing a total of 77.3 kg) collected from the Housatonic River (HR; Berkshire County, MA, USA) in October 1999 on organ weights and histology and hepatic concentrations of total...

At the request of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Research and Development, a subcommittee of the Board of Scientific Counselors Executive Committee conducted an independent and open peer review of the Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals Research Program (EDC Research Program) of the U.S. EPA. The subcommittee was charged with reviewing the design, relevance, progress

A multiscale geomorphic classification was established for the 39-mile, 59-mile, and adjacent segments of the Missouri National Recreational River administered by the National Park Service in South Dakota and Nebraska. The objective of the classification was to define naturally occurring clusters of geomorphic characteristics that would be indicative of discrete sets of geomorphic...

We evaluated the effects of feeding farm-raised mink (Mustela vison) diets containing polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)-contaminated fish from the Housatonic River (HR; Berkshire County, MA, USA) on adult reproductive performance and kit growth and survival. Diets contained 0.22-3.54% HR fish, providing 0.34-3.7 ??g total PCBs (TPCB)/g feed wet wt (3.5-68.5 pg toxic equivalence [TEQ]/g)...

Recovery efforts for threatened and endangered fish species are hampered by lack of knowledge of their reproductive ecology. Habitat requirements and environmental stimuli necessary for reproduction are often unknown and vary widely among species. For Great Plains riverine fishes, this is often complicated by the high turbidity of the system in which the species occur, which precludes...

The hypothesis that temperate stream fishes alter habitat use in response to changing water temperature and stream discharge was evaluated over a 1 year period in the Neosho River, Kansas, U.S.A. at two spatial scales. Winter patterns differed from those of all other seasons, with shallower water used less frequently, and low-flow habitat more frequently, than at other times. Non-random...

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation in south central Washington was claimed by the federal government as a site for the production of plutonium. During the course of production and operation of the facilities at Hanford, radionuclides and chromium were discharged directly into the river and also contaminated the groundwater. This study was designed to assess the effects of chromium (Cr) on...

The Neosho madtom is a small, short-lived catfish species endemic to gravel bars of the Neosho River in Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, U.S.A. It spawns during summer in nesting cavities excavated in gravel. Although the species has survived dam construction within the Neosho River basin, its declining numbers resulted in it being added to the federal threatened species list in 1991. To...

Multiple treatment (i.e., drying, chemical digestion, and oxidation) steps are often required during preparation of biological matrices for quantitative analysis of mercury; these multiple steps could potentially lead to systematic errors and poor recovery of the analyte. In this study, the Direct Mercury Analyzer (Milestone Inc., Monroe, CT) was utilized to measure total mercury in fish...