Reports

Intrusion of saltwater into parts of the shallow karst Biscayne aquifer is a major concern for the 2.5 million residents of Miami-Dade County that rely on this aquifer as their primary drinking water supply. Saltwater intrusion of this aquifer began when the Everglades were drained to provide dry land for urban development and agriculture. The reduction in water levels caused by this...

Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) systems can provide as much as tens of seconds of warning to people and automated systems before strong shaking arrives. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) and its partners are developing such an EEW system, called ShakeAlert, for the West Coast of the United States. This document describes the technical implementation of that system, which...

Estimating precipitation variations in space and time is an important aspect of drought early warning and environmental monitoring. An evolving drier-than-normal season must be placed in historical context so that the severity of rainfall deficits may quickly be evaluated. To this end, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science Center, working...

Landsat satellites have been capturing images of Earth from space since 1972. These images provide a long-term record of natural and human-induced changes on the global landscape. Comparing images from multiple years reveals slow and subtle changes as well as rapid and devastating ones. Landsat images are available from the Internet at no charge. Using the free software MultiSpec...

Facing an altered riparian plant community dominated by nonnative species, resource managers are increasingly interested in understanding how to manage and promote healthy riparian habitats in which native species dominate. For regulated rivers, managing flows is one tool resource managers consider to achieve these goals. Among many factors that can influence riparian community...

Monitoring the environment by making repeated measurements through time is essential to evaluate and track the health of ecosystems (fig. 1). Long-term datasets produced by such monitoring are indispensable for evaluating the effectiveness of environmental legislation and for designing mitigation strategies to address environmental changes in an era when human activities are altering the

The Jurassic–Lower Cretaceous Kingak Shale in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) includes several southward-offlapping depositional sequences that culminate in an ultimate shelf margin, which preserves the depositional profile in southern NPRA. The Kingak Shale thins abruptly southward across the ultimate shelf margin and grades into condensed shale, which is intercalated...

Two species of lionfish (Pterois volitans and Pterois miles) are the first marine fishes known to invade and establish self-sustaining populations along the eastern seaboard of the United States. First documented off the coast of Florida in 1985, lionfish are now found along the Atlantic coast of the United States as well as in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. Although long-term...

The USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database (NAS; nas.er.usgs.gov) is a comprehensive tool for demonstrating where and when nonindigenous species have been sighted across the U.S. Information in the database is used for state-level invasive species management plans, to focus monitoring efforts, for public education, predictive modeling, and for avoiding unintentional introductions...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Defense Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, prepared databases for mineral-resource target areas in Afghanistan. The purpose of the databases is to (1) provide useful data to ground-survey crews for use in performing detailed assessments of the areas and (2) provide useful information to private...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Defense Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, prepared databases for mineral-resource target areas in Afghanistan. The purpose of the databases is to (1) provide useful data to ground-survey crews for use in performing detailed assessments of the areas and (2) provide useful information to private...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Defense Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, prepared databases for mineral-resource target areas in Afghanistan. The purpose of the databases is to (1) provide useful data to ground-survey crews for use in performing detailed assessments of the areas and (2) provide useful information to private...