Reports

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Ashokan Watershed Stream Management Program, investigated the feasibility of bedload monitoring in the upper Esopus Creek watershed, Ulster and Greene Counties, New York, from 2017 to 2020. Traditional bedload samples were collected at two locations: Birch Creek at Big Indian, New York (station 013621955), and Stony Clove Creek at...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) calculated discharge at 13 water control structures in Florida using theoretical equations and uncalibrated coefficients gathered from previous studies and typical textbook values for selected flow regimes and structure types. These discharges were compared to the real-time discharges calculated and published by the USGS from October 1, 2007, to...

The National Park Service (NPS) is responsible for managing livestock grazing in nearly 100 parks, and several park grazing management planning efforts are currently underway. However, there is a recognized need to update grazing management practices to be responsive and adaptive to future climate change. As a step toward developing a process to address this need, this project worked...

This report presents a method for constructing a simplified numerical description of the electric current distributions in the ionosphere and gap region based on dipole-aligned loop elementary currents (DALECs). A theoretical basis for DALECs is presented, along with a prototypical algorithm for constructing an elementary numerical DALEC. The algorithm is verified and validated by...

Monitoring discharge in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal is critical for the accounting done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers of the diversion of water from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River Basin by the State of Illinois. The primary streamgage used for this discharge monitoring, the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal near Lemont, Illinois (U.S. Geological Survey station...

From its rolling pastures to its forested Appalachian peaks, Kentucky’s scenery offers beauty along with contrast. Rivers, including the Mississippi and the Ohio, border much of the State, and more rivers and hundreds of lakes are inside its borders. Kentucky is also home to the world’s longest known cave system, Mammoth Cave National Park, and its residents maintain long-held traditions...

In 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey published a distinctive map, entitled “A Tapestry of Time and Terrain,” which showed a generalized depiction of the geology in the conterminous United States, draped over shaded-relief topography. In 2003, that map concept was extended geographically, and the resulting new map was published at 1:8,000,000 scale as “The North America Tapestry of Time...

Massachusetts is the seventh smallest U.S. State in land area, but its size is surpassed by its contributions to U.S. history and the economy, its academic and medical expertise, and its natural features. The Atlantic Ocean to the east gives the “Bay State” more than 1,500 miles of coastline that were important in past fishing and maritime trade industries and in the tourism industry of...

Vance Creek drains a 24 square mile area of the Olympic Mountains in western Washington. The lower 4 miles of the creek often go dry in discontinuous patches during the summer, limiting salmon rearing success. To better understand sediment transport dynamics in the creek and aid in potential restoration design, bedload and suspended-sediment concentration samples were collected for water...

Invasive annual grasses (IAGs)—including Bromus tectorum (cheatgrass), Taeniatherum caput-medusae (medusahead), and Ventenata dubia (ventenata) species—present significant challenges for rangeland management by altering plant communities, impacting ecosystem function, reducing forage for wildlife and livestock, and increasing fire risk. Numerous spatial data products are used to map IAGs...

Invasive annual grasses (IAGs) degrade native plant communities, alter fire cycles, impact ecosystem processes, and threaten the persistence of some species. Therefore, controlling the spread of IAGs has become a land management priority in the western United States. A wide array of geospatial data has been developed in the last decade to help land managers combat the invasion and...