Publications

Portions of Underwood Creek in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin were reconstructed beginning in 2010 to allow for improved fish habitat and better management of streamflow during storm events. Four reaches of Underwood Creek were sampled in April 2021 for fish abundance by species to evaluate the status of fish communities after reconstruction efforts were completed. A total of 25 fish...

Executive Summary Chlorinated solvents, including trichloroethene (TCE) and other chlorinated volatile organic compounds (cVOCs), are widespread contaminants that can be treated by bioremediation approaches that enhance anaerobic reductive dechlorination. Reductive dechlorination can be enhanced either through the addition of an electron donor (biostimulation) or the addition of a known

History matching of large hydrologic models is challenging due to data sparsity and non-unique process combinations (and associated parameters) that can produce similar model predictions. We develop an ensemble-based history matching (and uncertainty quantification) approach using an iterative ensemble smoother (iES) method for three cutouts of the National Hydrologic Model (NHM) and...

Worldwide, about 50% of the population is served by groundwater-sourced drinking water. Numerous groundwater quality assessments have found that geogenic constituents are among the most common contaminants in drinking-water aquifers. Documenting changing groundwater quality is a crucial aspect of water availability assessments. We assess trends and occurrence of geogenic constituent...

Regulatory agencies in humid temperate environments rely on timely evaluations of streamflow depletion and drawdown to protect aquatic ecosystems and existing water users. Numerical models offer detailed insights, but their complexity and time demands often preclude their practical use in rapid decision-making. We present pycap-dss, an open-source Python package that implements a suite...

In the United States, private wells are not federally regulated, and many households do not test for Arsenic (As). Chronic exposure is linked with multiple health outcomes, and risk can change sharply over short distances and with well depth. Coarse maps or sparse sampling often miss exceedances. Most existing models operate at ∼1 km resolution and use groundwater chemistry or detailed...

The FluOil tool was developed to help with planning and early response for oil spills in rivers where subsurface oil-sediment interactions result in the formation of oil-particle aggregates (OPA). The turbulence and variable velocity associated with water flowing within a natural stream channel creates the conditions needed for an oil slick to break up into small droplets and mix in the...

Urban runoff containing high amounts of nutrients like phosphorus (P) is a well-established driver of surface water eutrophication. In residential areas, a primary source of nutrients is derived from leaf litter. P contained in leaves is leached and transported by stormwater from source to stream. The majority of P leached from leaf litter is in the dissolved phase, which can be...

The U.S. Geological Survey is developing nationally consistent water-use modeling approaches to replace previous methods relying on locally specific reported and estimated data. These national assessments require datasets that incorporate water withdrawal variability across the United States and over long periods. However, source data often have unclear definitions, missing or varied...

When sampling for waterborne microbes, researchers may need to diverge from recommended sample volumes due to logistical constraints, novel targets, or challenging matrices, with little guidance about the potential impact on results. In field studies, we measured bacteria, viruses, and protozoa (15 quantitative polymerase chain reaction assays) in paired large- and small-volume samples...

Urban stream rehabilitation plans can benefit from knowledge of the landscape setting and vegetative communities that were adjacent to streams prior to urbanization. Downstream to upstream connections of these characteristics can be relevant for native migratory fish species that have a range of preferred spawning habitats. Based on a need for more quantitative data on these potential...

The U.S. Geological Survey has developed a high-resolution inset groundwater-flow model in the Mississippi Delta as part of an interdisciplinary collaboration coordinated by the Mississippi Alluvial Plain project to provide a tool that stakeholders can use to support water-resource management decisions. Groundwater withdrawals from the Mississippi River Valley alluvial (MRVA) aquifer...