Reports

The National Park Service (NPS) manages the Nation’s most iconic destinations that attract millions of visitors from across the Nation and around the world. Trip-related spending by NPS visitors generates and supports a considerable amount of economic activity within park gateway communities. This economic effects analysis measures how NPS visitor spending cycles through local economies

Dairy manure, like the fecal excrement from any domesticated or wild animal, can contain pathogens capable of infecting humans and causing illness or even death. Pathogens in dairy manure can be broadly divided into categories of taxonomy or infectiousness. Dividing by taxonomy there are three pathogen groups in dairy manure: viruses (e.g., bovine rotavirus), bacteria (e.g., Salmonella...

The Chief Joseph Hatchery is the fourth hatchery obligated under the Grand Coulee Dam/Dry Falls project, originating in the 1940s. Leavenworth, Entiat, and Winthrop National Fish Hatcheries were built and operated as mitigation for salmon blockage at Grand Coulee Dam, but the fourth hatchery was not built, and the obligation was nearly forgotten. After the Colville Tribes successfully...

We constructed a one-dimensional daily averaged water-temperature model to simulate Trinity River temperatures for 1980–2013. The purpose of this model is to assess effects of water-management actions on water temperature and to provide water temperature inputs for a salmon population dynamics model. Simulated meteorological data, observed streamflow data, and observed water temperatures...

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated undiscovered, technically recoverable mean resources of 160 million barrels of conventional oil, 1,880 billion cubic feet of conventional gas, 602 million barrels of shale oil, and 6,395 billion cubic feet of shale gas in the Taoudeni Basin Province in Mali and Mauritania.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) South Atlantic Water Science Center (SAWSC) Georgia office, in cooperation with local, State, and other Federal agencies, maintains a long-term hydrologic monitoring network of more than 350 real-time, continuous-record, streamflow-gaging stations (streamgages). The network includes 14 real-time lake-level monitoring stations, 72 real-time surface-water...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with Federal, State, and local agencies, maintains a long-term network of hydrologic monitoring sites in Kansas. In 2015, the network included about 200 real-time streamgages (hereafter referred to as “gages”), 12 real-time reservoir-level monitoring stations, and 30 groundwater-level monitoring wells. These data and associated analyses...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earthquake Hazards and Landslide Hazards Programs are developing plans to add quantitative hazard assessments of earthquake-triggered landsliding and liquefaction to existing real-time earthquake products (ShakeMap, ShakeCast, PAGER) using open and readily available methodologies and products. To date, prototype global statistical models have been...

To obtain minerals suitable for age-dating and other analyses, it is necessary to first reduce the mineral-bearing rock to a fine, sand-like consistency. Reducing whole rock requires crushing, grinding, and sieving. Ideally, the reduced material should range in size from 80- to 270-mesh (an opening between wires in a sieve). The openings in an 80-mesh sieve are equal to 0.007 inches, 0...

Throughout the main Hawaiian Islands, introduced mosquito-borne disease has had, and continues to have, a profound impact on the distributions and abundance of native Hawaiian forest birds. Populations of remaining native forest birds are largely restricted to high elevation forests where mean temperatures are marginal for vector and parasite development and limited availability of...

The Miocene Columbia River Basalt Group and younger sedimentary deposits of lacustrine, fluvial, eolian, and cataclysmic-flood origins compose the aquifer system of the Pasco Basin in eastern Washington. Irrigation return flow and canal leakage from the Columbia Basin Project have caused groundwater levels to rise substantially in some areas, contributing to landslides along the Columbia...

Efforts to assess the likelihood of groundwater contamination from surface-derived compounds have spanned more than three decades. Relatively few of these assessments, however, have involved the use of process-based simulations of contaminant transport and fate in the subsurface, or compared the predictions from such models with measured data—especially over regional to national scales...