Reports

Freshwater streams in Connecticut are subject to many competing demands, including public water supply; agricultural, commercial, and industrial water use; and ecosystem and habitat needs. In recent years, drought has further stressed Connecticut’s water resources. To sustainably allocate and manage water resources among these competing uses, Federal, State, and local water-resource...

This report is a user guide for the Connecticut Streamflow and Sustainable Water Use Estimator (CT SSWUE) computer program (version 1.0). The CT SSWUE was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to provide a planning-level decision-support tool designed to help decision makers estimate daily mean...

This report documents the development of quantitative measures (indicators) of ecosystem structure and function for use in a Habitat Needs Assessment (HNA) for the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS). HNAs are led periodically by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Upper Mississippi River Restoration (UMRR) Program, which is the primary habitat restoration program on the UMRS. The UMRR...

Structured decision making is a systematic, transparent process for improving the quality of complex decisions by identifying measurable management objectives and feasible management actions; predicting the potential consequences of management actions relative to the stated objectives; and selecting a course of action that maximizes the total benefit achieved and balances tradeoffs among

This document was prepared to help scientists and the public, both of whom may not be familiar with bee taxonomy, learn how to practically identify bees in sagebrush steppe and shrubland habitats in southwest Idaho. We provide information to identify bees to the level of family and genus. A tentative list of the bee genera captured at sites used for insect community studies is included.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides cost-share funding and technical assistance to support the implementation of agricultural conservation practices on farms throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Conservation implementation has been substantial in the time period for which digital records are available (from 2007 through 2017). Farmer participation in USDA conservation...

The Farewell terrane is an exotic continental fragment in interior Alaska that during the early Paleozoic was the site of a passive margin. We report a 238U/206Pb zircon age of 432.9±3.0 Ma from a Farewell terrane ash in Mt. McKinley quadrangle, Alaska. This age overlaps with prominent detrital zircon age maxima reported from Silurian and Devonian strata from the Farewell, Arctic Alaska...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) collects a wide range of whole-water samples to test for the many physical and chemical constituents that represent stream conditions at the time of sampling to assess the quality of the Nation’s waters. During sampling efforts, in which a suspended-sediment concentration is one result among a broader suite of constituents, a sample is sometimes...

The Bi-State Distinct Population Segment (DPS) of greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus, hereinafter “sage-grouse”) occupies parts of Alpine, Mono, and Inyo Counties in California, and parts of Douglas, Esmeralda, Lyon, Carson City, and Mineral Counties in Nevada and was proposed for listing as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife...

The objective of this study was to assess the impact of different tagging methods and transmitter types on juvenile salmonid behavior, mortality, physiology, and swimming performance over a range of water temperatures and fish sizes. In Chapter 1, two laboratory experiments were conducted to assess maximum burst-swimming speeds, the probability of gulping air, swimming angles, and the...

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey assessed undiscovered, technically recoverable continuous mean resources of 46.3 billion barrels of oil and 281 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Wolfcamp shale and Bone Spring Formation of the Delaware Basin in the Permian Basin Province, southeast New Mexico and west Texas.

Hurricane Sandy provided a unique opportunity to better understand the potential effects of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus borealis) on recovering vegetation in areas overwashed by Hurricane Sandy in the Otis Pike Fire Island High Dune Wilderness Area. White-tailed deer are the dominant herbivore on Fire Island and they are known to decrease plant diversity, limit reproduction...