Reports

Groundwater provides nearly 50 percent of the Nation’s drinking water. To help protect this vital resource, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Project assesses groundwater quality in aquifers that are important sources of drinking water (Burow and Belitz, 2014). The glacial aquifer system constitutes one of the important areas being evaluated.

Groundwater provides nearly 50 percent of the Nation’s drinking water. To help protect this vital resource, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Project assesses groundwater quality in aquifers that are important sources of drinking water (Burow and Belitz, 2014). The Piedmont and Blue Ridge crystalline-rock aquifers constitute one of the important...

Groundwater provides nearly 50 percent of the Nation’s drinking water. To help protect this vital resource, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Project assesses groundwater quality in aquifers that are important sources of drinking water (Burow and Belitz, 2014). The Rio Grande aquifer system constitutes one of the important areas being evaluated.

The Navajo (N) aquifer is an extensive aquifer and the primary source of groundwater in the 5,400-square-mile Black Mesa area in northeastern Arizona. Availability of water is an important issue in northeastern Arizona because of continued water requirements for industrial and municipal use by a growing population and because of low precipitation in the arid climate of the Black Mesa...

The stocking of fish in riverine systems to re-establish stocks for conservation and management appears limited to a few species and often occurs in reaches impacted by impoundments. Stocking of sport fish species such as centrarchids and ictalurids is often restricted to lentic environments, although stocking in lotic environments is feasible with variable success. R. L. Harris Dam on...

Although cyanotoxins released during algal blooms have become an increasing concern in surface waters across the United States, the presence of cyanotoxins in northern Michigan lakes had not been evaluated in detail. The U.S. Geological Survey and National Park Service (NPS) led a 2-year study (2012 and 2013) to determine the presence of microcystin and other algal toxins in several...

The Arctic Ocean is presently experiencing changes in ocean temperature and sea ice extent that are unprecedented in the observational time period (satellite observations: 1979-Present). To provide context for the current changes, scientists turn to paleo records of past climate to document and study natural variability in the Arctic system. Paleoceanographic records that extend limited...

As part of the Sea-level and Storm Impacts on Estuarine Environments and Shorelines (SSIEES) project, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center conducted a single-beam bathymetry survey within the estuarine, open-bay, and tidal creek environments of Grand Bay, Alabama-Mississippi, from May to June 2015. The goal of the SSIEES...

Climatic flux together with anthropogenic changes in land use and land cover pose major threats to wildlife, but our understanding of their combined impacts is limited. In arid southwestern North America, ferruginous pygmy-owls (Glaucidium brasilianum) are of major conservation concern due to marked declines in abundance linked to changes in land use and land cover during the past...

Kasatochi is a small, isolated island volcano in the center of the Aleutian Island chain. It consists of a roughly circular cone ~3 km in diameter with a lake-filled central crater that is 1.2 km in diameter and extends from the highest point on the island to sea level. The earliest unit recognized is a thick series of mid-Pleistocene glaciovolcanic deposits consisting of autobrecciated...

Off the eastern coast of the United States, several deep canyons cut through the continental shelf, acting like funnels to move sediment from the shelf out to the deep seafloor. Exposed rock outcrops and ledges along the walls of these canyons provide important habitat for deepsea corals and sponges. Although a few scientific expeditions have visited these canyons in the 1970s (Hecker...

In October 2016, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in collaboration with the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership (PNAMP, www.pnamp.org), convened a 30-person workshop, https://www.pnamp.org/event/5509, to identify and prioritize development of enterprise systems for programs that monitor the status and trends of species populations and their terrestrial, aquatic, and marine...