Reports

During May through September 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Bureau of Land Management, inventoried and assessed existing water wells in southwestern Wyoming for inclusion in a possible groundwater-monitor network. Records were located for 3,282 wells in the upper Green River Basin, which includes the U.S. Geological Survey study area and the proposed Normally...

This study was done in cooperation with Elko County, Nevada in response to concerns over growing demand for water within the county and increasing external demands that are occurring statewide. The upper Humboldt River basin encompasses 4,360 square miles in northeastern Nevada and includes the headwaters area of the Humboldt River. Nearly all of the mean annual flow of the Humboldt...

The U.S. Geological Survey initiated a substantial effort in the summer of 2011 to measure and document the record-setting floods of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, including the reach in and near the New Madrid Floodway. The activation of the floodway, which had not occurred since 1937, provided a rare opportunity to collect a unique dataset describing a flood wave downstream from a...

Increased demands for cleaner burning energy, coupled with the relatively recent technological advances in accessing unconventional hydrocarbon-rich geologic formations, have led to an intense effort to find and extract natural gas from various underground sources around the country. One of these sources, the Marcellus Shale, located in the Allegheny Plateau, is currently undergoing...

The Glacial Ridge National Wildlife Refuge was established in 2004 on land in northwestern Minnesota that had previously undergone extensive wetland and prairie restorations. About 7,000 acres of drained wetlands were restored to their original hydrologic function and aquatic ecosystem. During 2007–9, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and...

The Greater Sage-Grouse, has been observed, hunted, and counted for decades. The sagebrush biome, home to the Greater Sage-Grouse, includes sagebrush-steppe and Great Basin sagebrush communities, interspersed with grasslands, salt flats, badlands, mountain ranges, springs, intermittent creeks and washes, and major river systems, and is one of the most widespread and enigmatic components...

The University of Nevada Las Vegas’ (UNLV) Science and Engineering Building is at the cutting edge of environmentally friendly design. As the result of a recent effort by the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Strong Motion Project in cooperation with UNLV, the building is now also in the forefront of buildings installed with structural monitoring systems to measure response during...

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks are located in the California Floristic Province, which has been named one of world‘s hotspots of endemic biodiversity (Myers et al. 2000). The California Floristic Province is the largest and most important geographic floristic unit in California and extends from the Klamath Mountains of southwestern Oregon to the northwestern portion of Baja...

Natural gas is an important component of the energy mix in the United States, producing greater energy yield per unit weight and less pollution compared to coal and oil. Most of the world’s natural gas resource is thermogenic, produced in the geologic environment over time by high temperature and pressure within deposits of oil, coal, and shale. About 20 percent of the natural gas...

A total of 2,541 constituents were evaluated and prioritized for national- and regional-scale ambient monitoring of water and sediment in the United States. This prioritization was done by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in preparation for the upcoming third decade (Cycle 3; 2013–23) of the National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program. This report provides the methods used to...

This report releases new information on grain-size distribution and whole rock geochemistry from samples collected in 2008 in and around Tuba City Open Dump, Tuba City, Arizona.

The weather and precipitation patterns in Missouri vary considerably from year to year. In 2008, the statewide average rainfall was 57.34 inches and in 2012, the statewide average rainfall was 30.64 inches. This variability in precipitation and resulting streamflow in Missouri underlies the necessity for water managers and users to have reliable streamflow statistics and a means to...