Publications

Most major crops in agricultural soils exhibit relatively low nutrient use efficiency for nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K), often necessitating supplemental nutrient inputs to achieve sustainable yields. Furthermore, the increasing use of biowastes such as compost, manure, and biosolids, which frequently have nutrient ratios that do not match crop requirements, has...

Wildfires can substantially impact the hydrology of forested watersheds, increasing the risk of hydrologic hazards such as flash floods and debris flows. Soil hydraulic properties related to infiltration are a key control in determining the timing and magnitude of these hydrogeomorphic events. In our study, we collected 445 soil cores from burned (216 cores) and unburned (229 cores)...

Information on river velocities enhances understanding flood hazards, evaluating habitat conditions, and predicting the transport of floating materials. In this follow-up study, we used data from two new sites, one with a more complex morphology and the other with a lower suspended sediment concentration, to provide further evidence that Moving Aircraft River Velocimetry (MARV) can yield...

Pesticides in freshwater systems can compromise water availability by degrading water quality, with implications for human health and aquatic life. Despite recognition of the need for national-scale monitoring and analysis, few studies have documented long-term trends in surface water pesticide contamination across the US. This study addresses that need by analyzing temporal trends and...

Many hydrologic applications require basic information on the size and shape of river channels, but measuring cross section (XS) geometry in the field or via remote sensing can be costly and often provides only partial coverage. Given these challenges, we capitalized upon an existing data set of 46,971 XS from gaging stations to evaluate various approximations of channel shape. After...

Freshwater salinization impacts the availability of water for human use and ecosystem needs worldwide. It has been estimated that total dissolved solids (TDS) in the Colorado River Basin cause $350 million/year in damages and substantial resources are devoted to reducing TDS loading to streams. This study describes the development and application of coupled watershed models that enable...

Snow is a vital component of high-latitude terrestrial systems, but environmental factors (e.g., permafrost) and complex vegetation challenge the accurate measurement of key snowpack properties. We evaluated local-scale ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and large-scale airborne lidar retrievals of snow depth collected during the NASA SnowEx 2023 campaign in tundra and boreal forest...

This report describes background and design of the “hydrofabric data model” which defines logic for implementation of data schemas and software that deals with hydrologic geospatial data. As a “logical” data model, the hydrofabric data model specifies details necessary to support compatibility of data and software that satisfy diverse needs without unnecessarily restricting...

The U.S. Geological Survey and the Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology) have developed watershed models of seasonal load estimates of total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) discharging into the Washington State waters of the Salish Sea from 2005 through 2020. The modeling approach used was dynamic SPARROW (SPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed attributes), a...

Characterizing changes to water availability for domestic, industrial, agricultural, and other uses is essential to support water management. To better quantify these changes, the U.S. Geological Survey and National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research produced two hydrologic models simulating water budget components from 1980 to 2021 over the contiguous United...

An extreme flood on the Powder River in southeastern Montana in May 1978 inundated its valley and deposited sediment on the floodplains and terraces at multiple heights. The recurrence interval for this flood was less than 1 percent in the reach between Moorhead and Broadus, Montana. Peak discharges at the U.S. Geological Survey streamgages at Moorhead and Broadus were 779 and 711 cubic...

Consistent, large-scale estimates of water availability are needed to identify and avoid potential conflicts among human and ecosystem uses of water. We present an assessment of water limitation, defined as the monthly balance (difference) between water supply (ws) and human consumptive water use (wc), for the conterminous United States (CONUS) during water years 2010–2020. We estimate...