Reports

This Interagency Agreement supports the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its research partners in understanding, predicting, and testing the recoverability and potential production characteristics of onshore natural gas hydrate in the Greater Prudhoe Bay area on the Alaska North Slope (ANS: Prudhoe Bay, Kuparuk River, and Milne Point areas) or other areas deemed suitable by DOE and...

Aquatic systems in and around the Long Island Sound (LIS) provide a variety of ecological and economic benefits, but in some areas of the LIS, aquatic ecosystems have become degraded by excess nitrogen. A substantial fraction of the nitrogen inputs to the LIS are transported through the groundwater-flow system. Because groundwater travel times in surficial aquifers can exceed 100 years...

The California Deepwater Investigations and Groundtruthing (Cal DIG) I project focuses on the potential seafloor hazards and impacts of alternative energy infrastructure in the outer continental shelf region offshore of south-central California. This is one of three reports covering a single study area located between Monterey and Point Conception, California in federal waters outside of...

Executive Summary Managers of our Nation’s resources face unprecedented challenges driven by the convergence of increasing, competing societal demands and a changing climate that affects the stability, vulnerability, and predictability of those resources. To help meet these challenges, the scientific community must take advantage of all available technologies, data, and integrative Earth...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Water Resources Research Act (WRRA) Program connects our Nation’s academic capital to the USGS mission by delivering university-based research, outreach, and education services to our citizens. For more than 50 years, the WRRA Program has invested in local, State, and regionally focused water-related research; information and technology transfer; and...

In 2010, tetrachloroethylene (PCE), a chlorinated volatile organic compound, was detected in groundwater from deep (more than 300 feet below land surface) fractures in monitoring wells tapping a crystalline-rock aquifer. The aquifer underlies the Milford-Souhegan glacial-drift aquifer, a high water-producing aquifer, and the Savage Municipal Water-Supply Well Superfund site in Milford...

Upper Esopus Creek is the primary tributary to the Ashokan Reservoir, part of the New York City water-supply system. Elevated concentrations of suspended sediment and turbidity in the watershed of the creek are of concern for the system. Water samples were collected through a range of streamflow and turbidity at 14 monitoring sites in the upper Esopus Creek watershed for analyses of...

Eastern wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris; hereafter turkey) is an important game species that is pursued by thousands of Alabama hunters each spring. Biologists in Alabama and other parts of the southeastern U.S. believe that turkey populations have been declining for at least two decades. Managers in many state agencies and organizations believe that liberal spring bag limits...

Executive Summary Global food and water security analysis and management require precise and accurate global cropland-extent maps. Existing maps have limitations, in that they are (1) mapped using coarse-resolution remote-sensing data, resulting in the lack of precise mapping location of croplands and their accuracies; (2) derived by collecting and collating national statistical data...

Groundwater supplies 35 percent of drinking water in the United States. Mapping the quantity and quality of groundwater at the depths used for potable supplies requires an understanding of locational variation in the characteristics of drinking-water wells (depth and open interval). Typical depths of domestic- and public-drinking-water supply wells vary by and within aquifer across the...

In January and March 2018, coastal Massachusetts experienced flooding from two separate nor’easters. To put the January and March floods into historical context, the USGS computed statistical stillwater elevations. Stillwater elevations recorded in January 2018 in Boston (9.66 feet relative to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988) have an annual exceedance probability of between 2...

The U.S. Geological Survey measured cyanobacteria, cyanotoxin synthetase genes, and cyanotoxins at 11 river sites throughout the conterminous United States in a multiyear pilot study during 2017–19 through the National Water Quality Assessment Project to better understand the occurrence of cyanobacteria and cyanotoxins in large inland and coastal rivers. This report focuses on the first...