Publications

To evaluate relationships between different anthropogenic impacts, contaminant occurrence, and fish health, we conducted in situ fish exposures across the Shenandoah River watershed at five sites with different land use. Exposure water was analyzed for over 500 chemical constituents, and organismal, metabolomic, and transcriptomic endpoints were measured in fathead minnows. Adverse...

In coastal aquifers, dynamic stresses such as climate forcings, groundwater withdrawals, and ocean tidal fluctuations cause nonlinear responses to groundwater levels. Such responses to the stresses impact groundwater resources and related flooding and infrastructure risks at multiple scales. We used time-series models such as transfer-function models and wavelet analysis to quantify the...

The James Tributary Summary outlines change over time for a suite of monitored tidal water quality parameters and associated potential drivers of those trends for the period 1985 – 2021 and provides a brief description of the current state of knowledge explaining these observed changes. Water quality parameters described include surface (above pycnocline) total nitrogen (TN), surface...

Large multi-site trend studies provide an opportunity to evaluate progress of waterbodies towards water-quality goals across broad geographic areas. Such studies often aggregate the results of site-specific models and thus contend with evaluating each model for appropriate fit and statistical assumptions. We explored the use of four traditional machine learning models (logistic...

Excess sediment is a common reason water bodies in the USA become listed as impaired resulting in total maximum daily loads (TMDL) that require municipalities to invest millions of dollars annually on management practices aimed at reducing suspended-sediment loads (SSLs), yet monitoring data are rarely used to quantify SSLs and track TMDL progress. A monitoring network was created to...

Abandoned underground coal mine aquifers cover a large part of West Virginia and could supply substantial quantities of water for agricultural, industrial, residential, and public use. Several Federal, State, and academic institutions have studied the availability and quality of water stored in abandoned underground coal mine aquifers for a variety of applications, such as economic...

Water withdrawn from rivers and streams accounts for approximately 80 percent of the public water supply in West Virginia. Localized and (or) seasonal droughts may threaten future water availability in the state, particularly in rural communities located in the headwaters of unregulated watersheds. Monthly water withdrawal data obtained from the West Virginia Department of Environmental...

The 2010 Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load was established for the water quality and ecological restoration of the Chesapeake Bay. In 2017, the latest science, data, and modeling tools were used to develop revised Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs). In this article, we examine the vulnerability of the Chesapeake Bay watershed to the combined pressures of climate change and...

Multiple climate-driven stressors, including warming and increased nutrient delivery, are exacerbating hypoxia in coastal marine environments. Within coastal watersheds, environmental managers are particularly interested in climate impacts on terrestrial processes, which may undermine the efficacy of management actions designed to reduce eutrophication and consequent low-oxygen...

Stakeholder participation in social-ecological systems (SES) modeling is increasingly considered a desirable way to elicit diverse sources of knowledge about SES behavior and to promote inclusive decision-making in SES. Understanding how participatory modeling processes function in the context of long-term adaptive management of SES may allow for better design of participatory processes...

In 2007, the U.S. Geological Survey partnered with Fairfax County, Virginia, to establish a long-term water-resources monitoring program to evaluate the hydrology, water quality, and ecology of Fairfax County streams and the watershed-scale effects of management practices. Fairfax County uses a variety of management practices, policies, and programs to protect and restore its water...

Introduction The Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) has operated a geographic information system (GIS) program since the early 1990s to address the established and growing need for and use of geospatial data, maps, and analysis within the CBP Partnership. This report is intended to detail the standard operating procedures of the CBP GIS program and address the quality assurance, quality...