Publications

Forested watersheds provide high-quality source water for many communities in the western United States. These watersheds are vulnerable to wildfires, and wildfire size, fire severity, and length of fire season have increased since the middle 1980s (Westerling and others, 2006). Burned watersheds are prone to increased flooding and erosion, which can impair water-supply reservoirs, water...

Groundwater quality in the approximately 1,000-square-mile (2,590-square-kilometer) Upper Santa Ana Watershed (USAW) 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 southern California in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. The GAMA Priority Basin Project is being...

The Powder River structural basin in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana is an area of ongoing coalbed natural gas (CBNG) development. Waters produced during CBNG development are managed with a variety of techniques, including surface impoundments and discharges into stream drainages. The interaction of CBNG-produced waters with the atmosphere and the semiarid soils of the...

The Big Bear Valley, located in the San Bernardino Mountains of southern California, has increased in population in recent years. Most of the water supply for the area is pumped from the alluvial deposits that form the Big Bear Valley groundwater basin. This study was conducted to better understand the thickness and structure of the groundwater basin in order to estimate the quantity and

Log removals of bacterial indicators, coliphage, and enteric viruses were studied in three membrane bioreactor (MBR) activated-sludge and two conventional secondary activated-sludge municipal wastewater treatment plants during three recreational seasons (May-Oct.) when disinfection of effluents is required. In total, 73 regular samples were collected from key locations throughout...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has operated a streamgage and published daily flows for the Des Plaines River at Riverside since Oct. 1, 1943. A HEC-RAS model has been developed to estimate the effect of the removal of Hofmann Dam near the gage on low-flow elevations in the reach approximately 3 miles upstream from the dam. The Village of Riverside, the Illinois Department of Natural...

The U.S. Geological Survey—in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District; City of Corpus Christi; Guadalupe–Blanco River Authority; San Antonio River Authority; and San Antonio Water System— configured, calibrated, and tested a watershed model for a study area consisting of about 7,726 square miles of the middle Nueces River watershed in south Texas. The...

Base flows were compared with published streamflow statistics to assess climate variability and to determine the published statistics that can be substituted for annual and seasonal base flows of unregulated streams in West Virginia. The comparison study was done by the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Water...

Coastal rivers represent a significant pathway for the delivery of natural and anthropogenic sediment-associated chemical constituents to the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts of the conterminous USA. This study entails an accounting segment using published average annual suspended sediment fluxes with published sediment-associated chemical constituent concentrations for (1)...

The potential for denitrification was tested in water samples from four Upper Floridan aquifer wells near a reclaimed water application site, in west Orange County Florida, and two adjacent springs. Results of the study indicate that denitrifying bacteria are present in the groundwater and spring water samples, and that these bacteria can readily denitrify the waters when suitable...

During summer and early fall 2010, 15 river samples and 6 fecal-source samples were collected in West Virginia. These samples were analyzed by three laboratories for three microbial source tracking (MST) markers: AllBac, a general fecal indicator; BacHum, a human-associated fecal indicator; and BoBac, a ruminant-associated fecal indicator. MST markers were analyzed by means of the...

Depletion of Ca from forest soils due to acidic deposition has had potentially pervasive effects on forest communities, but these impacts remain largely unknown. Because snails, salamanders, and plants play essential roles in the Ca cycle of northern hardwood forests, we hypothesized that their community diversity, abundance, and structure would vary with differences in biotic Ca...