Publications

Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMR) encompasses about 1.1 million acres (including Fort Peck Reservoir on the Missouri River) in northeastern Montana. To ensure that sufficient streamflow remains in the tributary streams to maintain the riparian corridors, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is negotiating water-rights issues with the Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission...

Many State and Federal agencies use information regarding the locations of streams having intermittent or perennial flow when making management and regulatory decisions. For example, the application of some Idaho water quality standards depends on whether streams are intermittent. Idaho Administrative Code defines an intermittent stream as one having a 7-day, 2-year low flow (7Q2) less...

Discharge and water-quality data collected from six streamflow-gaging stations were used in combination with the LOADEST software to provide an estimate of total (dissolved + particulate) selenium (Se) load to the south arm of Great Salt Lake (GSL) from May 2006 through March 2008. Total estimated Se load to GSL during this time period was 2,370 kilograms (kg). The 12-month estimated Se...

In 2005, the U.S. Geological Survey began a pilot study for the National Assessment of Water Availability and Use Program to assess the availability of water and water use in the Great Lakes Basin. Part of the study involves constructing a ground-water flow model for the Lake Michigan part of the Basin. Most ground-water flow occurs in the glacial sediments above the bedrock formations...

Water samples for tritium/helium-3 age dating were collected from 12 shallow monitoring wells in the Portland basin, Oregon, in 1997, and again in 1998. Robust tritium/helium-3 apparent (piston-flow) ages were obtained for water samples from 10 of the 12 wells; apparent ages ranged from 1.1 to 21.2 years. Method precision was demonstrated by close agreement between data collected in 1997...

In 1991, members of local, State, and Federal governments, as well as industry and interest groups, formed the Ground-water and Pesticides Strategy Committee (GPSC) to prepare the State of Wyoming Generic Management Plan for Pesticides in Ground Water. Little existing information was available describing pesticide occurrence in ground water; therefore, statewide baseline ground-water...

Little existing information was available describing pesticide occurrence in ground water of Wyoming, so the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Wyoming Department of Agriculture and the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality on behalf of the Wyoming Ground-water and Pesticides Strategy Committee, collected ground-water samples twice (during late summer/early fall and...

The High Plains aquifer underlies 111.6 million acres (174,000 square miles) in parts of eight States - Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. Water-level declines began in parts of the High Plains aquifer soon after the beginning of substantial irrigation with ground water in the aquifer area. This report presents water-level changes in the...

Two nationally consistent multimetric indices of urban intensity were developed to support studies of the effects of urbanization on streams in nine metropolitan areas of the conterminous United States: Atlanta, Georgia; Birmingham, Alabama; Boston, Massachusetts; Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; Denver, Colorado; Milwaukee-Green Bay, Wisconsin; Portland, Oregon; Raleigh, North Carolina; and...

Ground-water quality in the approximately 620-square-mile San Francisco Bay study unit (SFBAY) was investigated from April through June 2007 as part of the Priority Basin project of the Ground-Water Ambient Monitoring and Assessment (GAMA) Program. The GAMA Priority Basin project was developed in response to the Groundwater Quality Monitoring Act of 2001, and is being conducted by the U...

Increased withdrawals from alluvial aquifers of the southwestern United States during the last half-century have intensified the effects of drought on ground-water levels in valleys where withdrawal for irrigation is greatest. Furthermore, during wet periods, reduced withdrawals coupled with increased natural recharge cause rising ground-water levels. In order to manage water resources...

Throughout the world, many extensive wetlands, such as the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta of California (hereafter, the Delta), have been drained for agriculture, resulting in land-surface subsidence of peat soils. The purpose of this project was to study the in situ effects of wetland drainage on the remaining peat in the Delta. Peat cores were retrieved from four drained, farmed islands...