Publications

During August and September 2005, dissolved oxygen, temperature, pH, specific conductance, streamflow, and light intensity (LI) were determined continuously at six sites defining five reaches on Meduxnekeag River above and below Houlton, Maine. These data were collected as input for a dual-station whole-stream metabolism model to evaluate primary productivity in the river above and below...

More than 43 million people - about 15 percent of the U.S. population - rely on domestic wells as their source of drinking water (Hutson and others, 2004). The quality and safety of water from domestic wells, also known as private wells, are not regulated by the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act or, in most cases, by state laws. Rather, individual homeowners are responsible for maintaining...

No abstract available.

Water withdrawals, use, and wastewater return flows for the Concord River Basin were estimated for the period 1996-2000. The study area in eastern Massachusetts is 400 square miles in area and includes the basins of two major tributaries, the Assabet and Sudbury Rivers, along with the Concord River, which starts at the confluence of the two tributaries. About 400,000 people lived in the...

This report provides estimates of flood discharges at selected recurrence intervals for streamgages in and adjacent to New Hampshire and equations for estimating flood discharges at recurrence intervals of 2-, 5-, 10-, 25-, 50-, 100-, and 500-years for ungaged, unregulated, rural streams in New Hampshire. The equations were developed using generalized least-squares regression. Flood...

J.B. Converse (Converse) Lake is the primary source of drinking water for the city of Mobile, Alabama. Concerns regarding the ability of the reservoir to meet current and future water demands during drought conditions have prompted this study. The 1991 through 2006 water years included a drought that occurred during 2000, and drought conditions currently (2007) are affecting the area. To...

Over nearly two decades, the Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical Budgets (WEBB) small watershed research program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has documented how water and solute fluxes, nutrient, carbon, and mercury dynamics, and weathering and sediment transport respond to natural and humancaused drivers, including climate, climate change, and atmospheric deposition. Together with...

This article highlights major findings from two USGS reports: DeSimone (2009) and DeSimone and others (2009). These reports can be accessed at http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa. This article is followed by a summary of treatment considerations and options for owners of private domestic wells, written by Cliff Treyens of the National Ground Water Association.

In New England, groundwater arsenic occurrence has been linked to bedrock geology on regional scales. To ascertain and quantify this linkage at intermediate (100-101 km) scales, 790 groundwater samples from fractured bedrock aquifers in the greater Augusta, Maine area are analyzed, and 31% of the sampled wells have arsenic concentrations >10 ??g/L. The probability of [As] exceeding 10...

Different methods for determining catchments (incremental drainage areas) for stream segments of the medium-resolution (1:100,000-scale) National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) were evaluated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). The NHD is a comprehensive set of digital spatial data that contains information about surface...

Streamflow data from 35 stations in and near Alaska were analyzed for changes between the cool phase (1947–1976) and the warm phase (1977–2006) of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Winter, spring, and summer flow changes and maximum annual flow changes were different for glaciated basins (more than 10% glacier‐covered area) than for nonglaciated basins, showing the influence of glaciers...

Studies of the effects of urbanization on stream ecosystems have usually focused on single metropolitan areas. Synthesis of the results of such studies have been useful in developing general conceptual models of the effects of urbanization, but the strength of such generalizations is enhanced by applying consistent study designs and methods to multiple metropolitan areas across large...