Publications

While commonplace in clinical settings, DNA-based assays for identification or enumeration of drinking water pathogens and other biological contaminants remain widely unadopted by the monitoring community. In this study, shotgun metagenomics was used to identify taste-and-odor producers and toxin-producing cyanobacteria over a 2-year period in a drinking water reservoir. The sequencing data implic

The Neosho River and its primary tributary, the Cottonwood River, are the main sources of inflow to John Redmond Reservoir in east-central Kansas. Storm events during May through July 2015 caused large inflows of water and sediment into the reservoir. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Kansas Water Office, and funded in part through the Kansas State Water Plan Fund, computed the s

The Neosho River and its primary tributary, the Cottonwood River, are the main sources of inflow to John Redmond Reservoir in east-central Kansas. Storage loss in the reservoir resulting from sedimentation has been estimated to be 765 acre-feet per year for 1964–2014. The 1964–2014 sedimentation rate was almost 90 percent larger than the projected design sedimentation rate of 404 acre-feet per yea

A large nation-wide survey of cyanotoxins (1161 lakes) in the United States (U.S.) was conducted during the EPA National Lakes Assessment 2007. Cyanotoxin data were compared with cyanobacteria abundance- and chlorophyll-based World Health Organization (WHO) thresholds and mouse toxicity data to evaluate potential recreational risks. Cylindrospermopsins, microcystins, and saxitoxins were detected (

Phytoplankton communities in freshwater lakes, ponds, and reservoirs may be dominated by cyanobacteria (also called blue-green algae) under certain environmental conditions. Cyanobacteria may cause a range of water-quality impairments, including the potential for toxin production. Cyanobacteria toxins (cyanotoxins) may adversely impact human and ecological health. Microcystins are considered to be

Using satellite imagery to quantify the spatial patterns of cyanobacterial toxins has several challenges. These challenges include the need for surrogate pigments – since cyanotoxins cannot be directly detected by remote sensing, the variability in the relationship between the pigments and cyanotoxins – especially microcystins (MC), and the lack of standardization of the various measurement method

Evidence suggests that lakes are important sites for atmospheric CO2 exchange and so play a substantial role in the global carbon budget. Previous research has 2 weaknesses: (1) most data have been collected only during the open-water or summer seasons, and (2) data are concentrated principally on natural lakes in northern latitudes. Here, we report on the full annual cycle of atmospheric CO2 exch

The Kansas River is a primary source of drinking water for about 800,000 people in northeastern Kansas. Source-water supplies are treated by a combination of chemical and physical processes to remove contaminants before distribution. Advanced notification of changing water-quality conditions and cyanobacteria and associated toxin and taste-and-odor compounds provides drinking-water treatment facil

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with Federal, State, and local agencies, maintains a long-term network of hydrologic monitoring sites in Kansas. In 2015, the network included about 200 real-time streamgages (hereafter referred to as “gages”), 12 real-time reservoir-level monitoring stations, and 30 groundwater-level monitoring wells. These data and associated analyses provide a u

This report, prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of Water Resources, presents derivative statistics of 2013 irrigation water use in Kansas. The published regional and county-level statistics from the previous 4 years (2009–12) are shown with the 2013 statistics and are used to calculate a 5-year average. An overall Kansas averag

Recent studies have shown that the total nitrogen to total phosphorus (TN:TP) ratio and nitrogen oxidation state may have substantial effects on secondary metabolite (e.g., microcystins) production in cyanobacteria. We investigated the relationship between the water column TN:TP ratio and the cyanobacterial secondary metabolites geosmin, 2-methylisoborneol (MIB), and microcystin using multiple yea

Effective management of water resources requires accurate information on the mass, or load of water-quality constituents transported from upstream watersheds to downstream receiving waters. Despite this need, no single method has been shown to consistently provide accurate load estimates among different water-quality constituents, sampling sites, and sampling regimes. We evaluate the accuracy of s