Publications

Snow sublimation is an important component of the snow mass balance, but the spatial and temporal variability of this process is not well understood in mountain environments. This study combines a process‐based snow model (SnowModel) with eddy covariance (EC) measurements to investigate (1) the spatio‐temporal variability of simulated snow sublimation with respect to station observations...

Understanding trends in the diverse resources provided by large rivers will help balance tradeoffs among stakeholders and inform strategies to mitigate the effects of landscape scale stressors such as climate change and invasive species. Absent a cohesive coordinated effort to assess trends in important large river resources, a logical starting point is to assess our ability to draw...

Major flooding occurred August 24–25, 2016, in the Upper Iowa River Basin and Turkey River Basin in northeastern Iowa following severe thunderstorm activity over the region. About 8 inches of rain were recorded for the 24-hour period ending at 4 p.m., August 24, at Decorah, Iowa, and about 6 inches of rain were recorded for the 24-hour period ending at 7 a.m., August 24, at Cresco, Iowa...

Western US snowpack—snow that accumulates on the ground in the mountains—plays a critical role in regional hydroclimate and water supply, with 80% of snowmelt runoff being used for agriculture. While climate projections provide estimates of snowpack loss by the end of th ecentury and weather forecasts provide predictions of weather conditions out to 2 weeks, less progress has been made...

Hydrologic variables such as evapotranspiration (ET) and soil water storage are difficult to observe across spatial scales in complex terrain. Streamflow and lidar‐derived snow observations provide information about distributed hydrologic processes such as snowmelt, infiltration, and storage. We use a distributed streamflow data set across eight basins in the upper Tuolumne River region...

Corrosion in water-distribution systems is a costly problem and controlling corrosion is a primary focus of efforts to reduce lead (Pb) and copper (Cu) in tap water. High chloride concentrations can increase the tendency of water to cause corrosion in distribution systems. The effects of chloride are also expressed in several indices commonly used to describe the potential corrosivity of...

Drinking water for New York City is supplied from several large reservoirs, including a system of reservoirs west of the Hudson River. To provide updated reservoir capacity tables and bathymetry maps of the City’s six West of Hudson reservoirs, bathymetric surveys were conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey from 2013 to 2015. Depths were surveyed with a single-beam echo sounder and real...

Thermal stratification is important to the structure and function of lake and reservoir ecosystems. Yet when lakes undergo eutrophication, thermal stratification can exacerbate water quality problems. As a result, lake management has sometimes involved artificial mixing and destratification, though the available technologies are few and costly. It is therefore important to test the...

Knowledge of gas exchange in wetlands is important in order to determine fluxes of climatically and biogeochemically important trace gases and to conduct mass balances for metabolism studies. Very few studies have been conducted to quantify gas transfer velocities in wetlands, and many wind speed/gas exchange parameterizations used in oceanographic or limnological settings are...

Sea-level rise is pushing freshwater tides upstream into formerly non-tidal rivers. This tidal extension may increase the area of tidal freshwater ecosystems and offset loss of ecosystem functions due to salinization downstream. Without considering how gains in ecosystem functions could offset losses, landscape-scale assessments of ecosystem functions may be biased toward worst-case...

Water resource managers face increasing challenges in identifying what physical and chemical stressors are responsible for the alteration of biological conditions in streams. The objective of this study was to assess the comparative influence of multiple stressors on benthic diatoms at 98 sites that spanned a range of stressors in an agriculturally dominated region in the upper Midwest...

Beginning in the 1970s, Alameda County Water District began infiltrating imported water through ponds in repurposed gravel quarries at the Quarry Lakes Regional Park, in the Niles Cone groundwater subbasin, to recharge groundwater and to minimize intrusion of saline, San Francisco Bay water into freshwater aquifers. Hydraulic connection between distinct aquifers underlying Quarry Lakes...