Publications

No abstract available.

Contamination from acid mine drainage affects ecosystems and usability of groundwater for domestic and municipal purposes. The Captain Jack Superfund Site outside of Ward, Boulder County, Colorado, USA, hosts a draining mine adit that was remediated through emplacement of a hydraulic bulkhead to preclude acid mine drainage from entering nearby Lefthand Creek. During impoundment of water...

Salinity control efforts in the Colorado River Basin have focused on mobilization of salts from irrigated land, but nonirrigated rangelands are also a source of salinity. In particular, lands where soils have formed from the Late Cretaceous Mancos Shale under arid and semiarid climates contain considerable quantities of salt, mainly in the subsurface. Hundreds of thousands of contour...

Introduction The Rocky Mountains and the Colorado River Basin in the Western United States represent complex, interconnected systems that sustain a number of species, including tens of millions of humans. These systems face several challenges, including worsening drought, altered wildfire regimes, climate change, and the spread of invasive species. These factors can exacerbate one...

The U.S. Geological Survey Colorado Water Science Center provides timely, high-quality science information on Colorado’s water resources to help planners, managers, and others to make the decisions necessary for the use of these limited and shared resources throughout the State.

This report describes status and trends in watershed condition across the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) area over the first 25 years since its inception in 1994. The program charged with this task is the Aquatic and Riparian Effectiveness Monitoring Program (AREMP), which has assembled information from field data collection, spatial datasets, and a host of landscape models to evaluate the...

While microplastic inputs into rivers are assumed to be correlated with anthropogenic activities and to accumulate towards the sea, the impacts of water management on downstream microplastic transport are largely unexplored. A comparative study of microplastic abundance in Boulder Creek (BC), and its less urbanized tributary South Boulder Creek (SBC), (Colorado USA), characterized the...

The snow surface is at the interface between the atmosphere and Earth. The surface of the snowpack changes due to its interaction with precipitation, wind, humidity, short- and long-wave radiation, underlying terrain characteristics, and land cover. These connections create a dynamic snow surface that impacts the energy and mass balance of the snowpack, blowing snow potential, and other...

Selenium in aquatic ecosystems of the lower Gunnison River Basin in Colorado is affecting the recovery of populations of endangered, native fish species. Dietary exposure is the primary pathway for bioaccumulation of selenium in fish, and particulate selenium can be consumed directly by fish or by the invertebrates on which fish feed. Although selenium can be incorporated into...

Two synoptic sampling campaigns were conducted to quantify metal loading to Illinois Gulch, a small stream affected by historical mining activities. The first campaign was designed to determine the degree to which Illinois Gulch loses water to the underlying mine workings, and to determine the effect of these losses on observed metal loads. The second campaign was designed to evaluate...

The purpose of this study is to provide information regarding the stability of ephemeral streams on the north side of the Grand Valley, Colorado. The ungaged ephemeral streams in this semiarid region are of particular interest because (1) the underlying bedrock geology, Mancos Shale, is a sedimentary rock deposit that has been identified as a major contributor of salinity to the Colorado...

Single frequency active hydroacoustic measurements have been correlated with suspended sediment concentration. In river systems that include widely varying suspended sediment particle sizes, a multi-frequency hydroacoustic approach has increased predictive capabilities. However, the multi-frequency approach requires installation and operation of multiple sensors in a river channel and...