Publications

These proceedings contain the abstracts, manuscripts, and posters of presentations given at the Fourth Interagency Conference on Research in the Watersheds—Observing, Studying, and Managing for Change, held at the Westmark Hotel in Fairbanks, Alaska, September 26–30, 2011. The conference was jointly hosted by the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. Watersheds face...

Groundwater quality in the approximately 1,000 square mile (2,590 km2) Monterey Bay and Salinas Valley Basins (MS) study unit was investigated as part of the Priority Basin Project of the Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment (GAMA) Program. The study unit is located in central California in Monterey, Santa Cruz, and San Luis Obispo Counties. The GAMA Priority Basin Project is...

The Monterey-Salinas study unit is nearly 1,000 square miles and consists of the Santa Cruz Purisima Formation Highlands, Felton Area, Scotts Valley, Soquel Valley, West Santa Cruz Terrace, Salinas Valley, Pajaro Valley, and Carmel Valley groundwater basins (California Department of Water Resources, 2003; Kulongski and Belitz, 2011). These basins were grouped into four study areas based...

Pharmaceutical compounds were detected at low concentrations in 2.3% of 1231 samples of groundwater (median depth to top of screened interval in wells = 61 m) used for public drinking-water supply in California. Samples were collected statewide for the California State Water Resources Control Board's Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment (GAMA) Program. Of 14 pharmaceutical...

Marginally productive land, such as that enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), may provide acreage and economic incentives for cellulosic energy production. Improving the yields from these lands will help establish a biomass producer's position in the marketplace. The effects of water and nitrogen on biomass yields were investigated in both a plot-scale experiment and a...

The Chehalis River has the largest drainage basin of any river entirely contained within the State of Washington with a watershed of approximately 2,700 mi2 and has correspondingly diverse geology and land use. Demands for water resources have prompted the local citizens and governments of the Chehalis River basin to coordinate with Federal, State and Tribal agencies through the Chehalis...

As a result of climate change and variability, sea level is rising throughout the world, but the rate along the east coast of the United States is higher than the global mean rate. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the City of Newport News, Virginia, conducted a study to evaluate the effects of possible future sea-level rise on the salinity front in two tributaries to...

The Green Valley reclaimed coal refuse site, near Terre Haute, Ind., was mined for coal from 1948 to 1963. Subsurface coal was cleaned and sorted at land surface, and waste material was deposited over the native glacial till. Approximately 2.7 million cubic yards of waste was deposited over 159 acres (92.3 hectares) in tailings ponds and gob piles. During 1993, the Indiana Department of...

In 2009, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the City of Santa Cruz, conducted bathymetric and topographic surveys to determine the water storage capacity of, and the loss of capacity owing to sedimentation in, Loch Lomond Reservoir in Santa Cruz County, California. The topographic survey was done as a supplement to the bathymetric survey to obtain information about temporal...

A combination of above-normal precipitation during the winter and spring of 2007-2008 and extensive rainfall during June 2008 led to severe flooding in many parts of the midwestern United States. This resulted in transport of substantial amounts of nutrients and sediment from Iowa basins into the Mississippi River. Water samples were collected from 31 sites on six large Iowa tributaries...

A conceptual model of the Great Basin carbonate and alluvial aquifer system (GBCAAS) was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for a regional assessment of groundwater availability as part of a national water census. The study area is an expansion of a previous USGS Regional Aquifer Systems Analysis (RASA) study conducted during the 1980s and 1990s of the carbonate-rock province...

Groundwater quality in the 633-square-mile Northern Coast Ranges (NOCO) study unit was investigated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) from June to November 2009, as part of the California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) Groundwater Ambient Monitoring and Assessment (GAMA) Program's Priority Basin Project (PBP) and the U.S. Geological Survey National Water-Quality...