Reports

Introduction Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge (AMNWR) was established by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (with the assistance of The Nature Conservancy) in 1984 to protect one of the highest concentrations of endemic flora and fauna in North America (Pister, 1985; Sada, 1990). Prior to federal acquisition, Ash Meadows had been anthropogenically altered, and non-native species had...

Throughout the past century, emergent wetlands have been declining across the Gulf of Mexico. Emergent wetland ecosystems provide a plethora of resources including plant and wildlife habitat, commercial and recreational economic activity, water quality improvement, and natural barriers against storms. As emergent wetland losses increase, so does the need for information on the causes and...

A software program, called P2S, has been developed which couples the daily stream temperature simulation capabilities of the U.S. Geological Survey Stream Network Temperature model with the watershed hydrology simulation capabilities of the U.S. Geological Survey Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System. The Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System is a modular, deterministic, distributed...

Few historical streamflow and water-quality data are available to characterize the segment of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo del Norte (hereinafter Rio Grande) extending from near Presidio to near Langtry, Texas. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the National Park Service and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, collected water-quality and streamflow data from the Rio...

No abstract available.

Satellite and acoustic tracking results for green turtles, hawksbills, and loggerheads have revealed patterns in the proportion of time that tagged turtles spend within various zones of the park, including the RNA. Green turtles primarily utilize the shallow areas in the northern portion of the park. Hawksbills were mostly observed near Garden Key and loggerheads were observed throughout...

Dissolved-solids loading from 17 natural catchments and 14 irrigated catchments in the Upper Colorado River Basin was examined for the period from 1974 through 2003. In general, dissolved-solids loading increased and decreased concurrently in natural and irrigated catchments but at different magnitudes. Annually, the magnitude of loading in natural catchments changed about 10 percent...

Mosca Pass Trail takes the hiker on a journey into the Earth's crust. Here you can see the results of tremendous tectonic forces that bend and tear rocks apart and raise mountain ranges. The trail begins near the Sangre de Cristo fault, which separates the Sangre de Cristo Range from the San Luis Valley. The valley is part of the Rio Grande rift, a series of fault basins extending from...

White-nose syndrome (WNS) is a devastating disease that has killed millions of hibernating bats since it first appeared in New York in 2007 and has spread at an alarming rate from the northeastern to the central United States and Canada. The disease is named for the white fungus Geomyces destructans that infects the skin of the muzzle, ears, and wings of hibernating bats. The U.S...

The U.S. Geological Survey's Focus on Quaternary Stratigraphy in Los Angeles (FOQUS-LA) project was a cooperative coring program between Federal, State, and local agencies. It was designed to provide a better understanding of earthquake potentials and to develop a stratigraphic model of the western Los Angeles Basin in California. The biostratigraphic, geochronologic, and paleoecologic...

As a leading science and information agency and in fulfillment of its mission to provide reliable scientific information to describe and understand the Earth, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) ensures that all scientific data are effectively hosted, adequately described, and appropriately accessible to scientists, collaborators, and the general public. To succeed in this task, the USGS...

Elevated loads of salt and selenium can impair the quality of water for both anthropogenic and natural uses. Understanding the environmental processes controlling how salt and selenium are introduced to streams is critical to managing and mitigating the effects of elevated loads. Dominant relations between salt and selenium loads and environmental characteristics can be established by...