Publications

Because our pupils are about 6.5 cm apart, each eye views a scene from a different angle and sends a unique image to the visual cortex, which then merges the images from both eyes into a single picture. The slight difference between the right and left images allows the brain to properly perceive the 'third dimension' or depth in a scene (stereopsis). However, when a person views a...

In 1998, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Geological Survey began a long-term monitoring program to evaluate the water quality of most watersheds in Michigan. Major goals of this Water-Chemistry Monitoring Program were to identify streams exceeding or not meeting State or Federal water-quality standards and to assess if constituent concentrations reflecting...

A major focus of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Trout Lake Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical Budgets (WEBB) project is the development of a watershed model to allow predictions of hydrologic response to future conditions including land-use and climate change. The coupled groundwater/surface-water model GSFLOW was chosen for this purpose because it could easily incorporate an existing...

The U.S. Geological Survey and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality are jointly monitoring selected water-quality constituents of inland lakes through 2015 as part of Michigan’s Lake Water Quality Assessment program. During 2001–2005, 433 lake basins from 364 inland lakes were monitored for baseline water-quality conditions and trophic status. This report summarizes the water...

Concern that selected chemicals in the environment may act as endocrine active compounds in aquatic ecosystems is widespread; however, few studies have examined the occurrence of endocrine active compounds and identified biological markers of endocrine disruption such as intersex occurrence in fish longitudinally in a river system. This report presents environmental data collected and...

Field and analytical methods, mercury and ancillary water-quality data, and associated quality-control data are reported for eight streams in Oregon, Wisconsin, and Florida from 2002 to 2006. The streams were sampled as part of a U.S. Geological Survey National Water-Quality Assessment Program study of mercury cycling, transport, and bioaccumulation in urban and nonurban stream...

In 1990, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed a study of the hydrogeology of Huron County, Michigan (Sweat, 1991). In 1993, Huron County and the USGS entered into a continuing agreement to measure water levels at selected wells throughout Huron County. As part of the agreement, USGS initially operated four continuous water-level recorders, installed from 1988 to 1991 on wells in...

Excessive nutrient [phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N)] input from point and nonpoint sources is frequently associated with degraded water quality in streams and rivers. Point-source discharges of nutrients are fairly constant and are controlled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA) National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. To reduce inputs from nonpoint sources...

A field trial was done in the Upper Tiffin River Watershed, in southeastern Michigan, to determine the influence of liquid dairy manure effluent (LDME) management practices on the quality of agricultural subsurface-drain water. Samples from subsurface drains were analyzed for nutrients, fecal-coliform and Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria, antibiotics, chemicals typically detected in...

In 2006, Michigan enacted laws to prevent new large capacity withdrawals from decreasing flows to the extent that they would functionally impair a stream's ability to support characteristic fish populations. The median streamflow for the summer month of lowest flow was specified by state decision makers as the index flow on which likely impacts of withdrawals would be assessed. At sites...

Models based upon coastal engineering equations have been developed to quantify wind fetch length and several physical wave characteristics including significant height, length, peak period, maximum orbital velocity, and shear stress. These models, developed using Environmental Systems Research Institute's ArcGIS 9.2 Geographic Information System platform, were used to quantify...

Butternut Lake is a 393-hectare, eutrophic to hypereutrophic lake in northcentral Wisconsin. After only minor improvements in water quality were observed following several actions taken to reduce the nutrient inputs to the lake, a detailed study was conducted from 2002 to 2007 by the U.S. Geological Survey to better understand how the lake functions. The goals of this study were to...