Publications

Each year, an estimated load of 6.5 million tons of sediment is transported by rivers to Puget Sound and its adjacent waters—enough to cover a football field to the height of six Space Needles. This estimated load is highly uncertain because sediment studies and available sediment-load data are sparse and historically limited to specific rivers, short time frames, and a narrow range of...

The Barton Springs zone, which comprises the Barton Springs segment of the Edwards aquifer and the watersheds to the west that contribute to its recharge, is in south-central Texas, an area with rapid growth in population and increasing amounts of land area affected by development. During November 2008-March 2010, an investigation of factors affecting the fate and transport of nutrients...

The Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer in south-central Oklahoma provides water for public supply, farms, mining, wildlife conservation, recreation, and the scenic beauty of springs, streams, and waterfalls. Proposed development of water supplies from the aquifer led to concerns that large-scale withdrawals of water would cause decreased flow in rivers and springs, which in turn could result in...

The City of Baltimore, Maryland, and parts of five surrounding counties obtain their water from Loch Raven and Liberty Reservoirs. A third reservoir, Prettyboy, is used to resupply Loch Raven Reservoir. Management of the watershed conditions for each reservoir is a shared responsibility by agreement among City, County, and State jurisdictions. The most recent (2005) Baltimore Reservoir...

Significant Findings Water and sediment quality monitoring was conducted before and after the removal of a piling field located in Coal Creek Slough near Longview, Washington. Passive chemical samplers and continuous water-quality monitoring instruments were deployed at the piling removal site, Coal Creek Slough Site 1 (CCS1), and at a comparison site, Coal Creek Slough Site 2 (CCS2)...

Lake Houston is a surface-water-supply reservoir and an important recreational resource for the city of Houston, Texas. Growing concerns over water quality in Lake Houston prompted a detailed assessment of water quality in the reservoir. The assessment focused on water-quality constituents that affect the aesthetic quality of drinking water. The hydrologic and water-quality conditions...

A primary goal of ongoing field research of bridge scour is improvement of scour-prediction equations so that pier-scour depth is predicted accurately-an important element of hydraulic analysis and design of highway bridges that cross streams, rivers, and other waterways. Scour depth for piers in streambeds with a mixture of sand, gravel, cobbles, and boulders (coarse-bed streams, which...

No abstract available.

In the present study a branched serial first-order decay (BSFOD) model is presented and used to derive transformation rates describing the decay of a common herbicide, atrazine, and its metabolites observed in unsaturated soils adapted to previous atrazine applications and in soils with no history of atrazine applications. Calibration of BSFOD models for soils throughout the country can...

The purpose of this study was to determine peat formation processes throughout the millennia in four tidal marshes in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Peat cores collected at each site were analyzed for bulk density, loss on ignition, and percent organic carbon. Core data and spline fit age-depth models were used to estimate inorganic sedimentation, organic accumulation, and carbon...

We assessed monomethylmercury (MeHg) dynamics in a tidal wetland over three seasons using a novel method that employs a combination of in situ optical measurements as concentration proxies. MeHg concentrations measured over a single spring tide were extended to a concentration time series using in situ optical measurements. Tidal fluxes were calculated using modeled concentrations and bi

The 326 ha Río Icacos watershed in the tropical wet forest of the Luquillo Mountains, northeastern Puerto Rico, is underlain by granodiorite bedrock with weathering rates among the highest in the world. We pooled stream chemistry and total suspended sediment (TSS) data sets from three discrete periods: 1983–1987, 1991–1997, and 2000–2008. During this period three major hurricanes crossed...