Publications

The Grand Canyon region in northern Arizona is a home or sacred place of origin for many Native Americans and is visited by over 6 million tourists each year. Most communities in the area depend upon groundwater for all water uses. Some of the highest-grade uranium ore in the United States also is found in the Grand Canyon region. A withdrawal of over 1 million acres of Federal land in...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority (ABCWUA), measures groundwater levels continuously (hourly) and discretely (semiannually and annually) at a network of wells and piezometers (hereafter called the observation network) within the Middle Rio Grande Basin in central New Mexico. Groundwater levels that are measured in...

About one-quarter of the water supply for the Village of Ruidoso, New Mexico, is from groundwater pumped from wells located along North Fork Eagle Creek in the National Forest System lands of the Lincoln National Forest near Alto, New Mexico. Because of concerns regarding the effects of groundwater pumping on surface-water hydrology in the North Fork Eagle Creek Basin and the effects of...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Bernalillo County Public Works Division, conducted a 1-year study in 2015 to assess the spatial and temporal distribution of evapotranspiration (ET) and available water within the East Mountain area in Bernalillo County, New Mexico. ET and available water vary spatiotemporally because of complex interactions among environmental factors...

A geochemical characterization of groundwater in the Big Chino subbasin of Arizona was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the City of Prescott, the Town of Prescott Valley, and the Salt River Project, to understand groundwater evolution through the study area and the source of water to springs along the gaining reach of the Verde River just downstream from its...

Modeling forest change effects on snow is critical to resource management. However, many models either do not appropriately model canopy structure or cannot represent fine‐scale changes in structure following a disturbance. We applied a 1 m2 resolution energy budget snowpack model at a forested site in New Mexico, USA, affected by a wildfire, using input data from lidar to represent...

The record of mining legacy and water quality was investigated in sediments collected in 2018 from four trenches in the Aztec, New Mexico, drinking-water reservoir #1. Bulk chemical analysis of sediments with depth in the reservoir revealed variable trace-element (uranium, vanadium, arsenic, copper, sulfur, silver, lead, and zinc) concentrations, which appear to coincide with historical...

The Albuquerque Basin, located in central New Mexico, is about 100 miles long and 25–40 miles wide. The basin is hydrologically defined as the extent of consolidated and unconsolidated deposits of Tertiary and Quaternary age that encompasses the structural Rio Grande Rift between San Acacia to the south and Cochiti Lake to the north. A 20-percent population increase in the basin from...

In order to comply with a current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency watershed-based National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit, the City of Albuquerque required a better understanding of the rainfall-runoff processes in its small urban watersheds. That requirement prompted the initiation of the assessment of three existing watershed models that were developed to simulate...

In the arid landscape south of the Grand Canyon, natural springs and seeps are a critical resource for endemic species and Native American tribes. Groundwater is potentially threatened by expanding populations, visitations, and mineral extraction activities. Environmental tracers including noble gases, stable isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen in water, tritium, and carbon-14 were used to

Snow interception by the forest canopy controls the spatial heterogeneity of subcanopy snow accumulation leading to significant differences between forested and nonforested areas at a variety of scales. Snow intercepted by the forest canopy can also drastically change the surface albedo. As such, accurately modeling snow interception is of importance for various model applications such...

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) is widely used to simulate the effects of climate, topography, land cover, and soils on landscape-level hydrologic response and streamflow. This study developed, calibrated, and assessed a PRMS model that simulates near-native or naturalized streamflow conditions in the Upper Rio Grande Basin. A PRMS model framework...