Reports

Invasion by exotic-annual grasses such as cheatgrass is impacting semiarid rangelands and especially transportation corridors, where it causes increased wildfire and many other environmental issues. Methods of reducing exotic annual grasses and restoring native perennials are needed, particularly testing of their intended target or unintended, non-target effects. In a series of...

We provide the final non-interpretive report with an extended due date of 31 January 2023 describing Project 2019-W05, which was designed to characterize seismic site conditions at strong motion (SM) earthquake recording stations in southern California for the research period of 1 April 2019–31 March 2022 (Figure 1). In this report, we briefly show examples of processed field recorded...

In 2020, a new spill program was implemented to aid the downstream passage of juvenile salmonids at mainstem dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers. Under this program, the total dissolved gas (TDG) cap was increased to 125% and monitoring of native nonsalmonids for gas bubble trauma (GBT) became a requirement. The primary objective of this work was to measure the incidence and severity...

During water years 2013–18, the U.S. Geological Survey National Water-Quality Assessment Project sampled the National Water Quality Network for Rivers and Streams year-round and reported on 221 pesticides at 72 sites across the United States. Pesticides are difficult to measure, their concentrations often represent discrete snapshots in time, and capturing peak concentrations is...

Each mineral commodity chapter of the 2023 edition of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Mineral Commodity Summaries (MCS) includes information on events, trends, and issues for each mineral commodity as well as discussions and tabular presentations on domestic industry structure, Government programs, tariffs, 5-year salient statistics, and world production, reserves, and resources. The...

The Kansas River and its associated alluvial aquifer provide drinking water to more than 950,000 people in northeastern Kansas. Water suppliers that rely on the Kansas River as a water-supply source use physical and chemical processes to treat and remove contaminants before public distribution. An early-notification system of changing water-quality conditions allows water suppliers to...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) conducts a wide variety of science that improves understanding of droughts and their effects on ecosystems and society. This work includes data collection and monitoring of aquatic and terrestrial systems; assessment and analysis of patterns, trends, drivers, and impacts of drought; development and application of predictive models; and delivery of...

This study compares the results of two regional steady-state U.S. Geological Survey Modular Three-Dimensional Finite-Difference Ground-Water Flow (MODFLOW) models constructed to quantify the hydrologic changes in the St. Louis River Basin from iron mining on the Mesabi Iron Range in northeastern Minnesota. The U.S. Geological Survey collaborated in this study with bands of the Minnesota...

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District, is deepening the St. Johns River channel in Jacksonville, Florida, by 7 feet along 13 miles of the river channel beginning at the mouth of the river at the Atlantic Ocean, in order to accommodate larger, fully loaded cargo vessels. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, monitored stage...

The Riverton Processing site was a uranium mill 4 kilometers southwest of Riverton, Wyoming, that prepared uranium ore for nuclear reactors and weapons from 1958 to 1963. The U.S. Department of Energy completed surface remediation of the uranium tailings in 1989; however, groundwater below and downgradient from the tailings site and nearby Little Wind River was not remediated. Beginning...

We conducted a field study during 2020–21 to describe habitat use patterns of juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) in the mainstem Willamette, McKenzie, and Santiam Rivers and to evaluate how habitat suitability criteria affected the predictive accuracy of a hydraulic habitat model. Two approaches were used to collect habitat use data: a stratified sampling design was used...