Publications

Globally, coastal communities experience flood hazards that are projected to worsen from climate change and sea level rise. The 100-year floodplain or record flood are commonly used to identify risk areas for planning purposes. Remote communities often lack measured flood elevations and require innovative approaches to estimate flood elevations. This study employs observation-based methods to esti

Urban growth and other land-use changes were examined in the Lower Rio Grande Valley and Alluvial Floodplain ecoregions in Texas, along the U.S.-Mexico border. The analysis focused on understanding the types and causes of land change as well as the recovery of natural land-cover types between years 2001 and 2011. The purpose was to develop improved capabilities for understanding land change dynami

Executive Summary This study examined the abundance and distribution of nutrients and phytoplankton in the tidal aquatic environments of the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta (Delta) and Suisun Bay, comprising three spatial surveys conducted in May, July, and October of 2018 that used continuous underway high frequency sampling and measurements onboard a high-speed boat to characterize spatial variatio

Anthropogenically driven flow intermittency is increasing in freshwater streams, with important implications for the management and conservation of aquatic ecosystems. Because most freshwater fishes are mobile, they are expected to emigrate from intermittent reaches, but this may not be true in streams transitioning from perennial to intermittent. Here, we attempt to determine if riverine fishes v

Non-contact, remote sensing approaches to measuring flow velocities in river channels are widely used, but typical workflows involve acquiring images in the field and then processing data later in the office. To reduce latency between acquisition and output, with the ultimate goal of enabling real-time image velocimetry, we developed a Robot Operating System (ROS) package for Particle Image Veloci

Surface-water supplies are important sources of drinking water for residents in the Triangle area of North Carolina, which is located within the upper Cape Fear and Neuse River Basins. Since 1988, the U.S. Geological Survey and a consortium of local governments have participated in a cooperative effort, known as the Triangle Area Water Supply Monitoring Project, to track water-quality and quantity

Prior to 2014, local utilities and State agencies monitored for cyanotoxins and taste-and-odor (T&O) compounds and reported occasional detections in three water-supply reservoirs in Wake County, North Carolina. Comparable data for cyanotoxins and T&O compounds were lacking for other water-supply reservoirs in the Triangle area of North Carolina. This report assesses whether cyanotoxins and T&O com

Exotic annual grass invasion is a widespread threat to the integrity of sagebrush ecosystems in Western North America. Although many predictors of annual grass prevalence and native perennial vegetation have been identified, there remains substantial uncertainty about how regional-scale and local-scale predictors interact to determine vegetation heterogeneity, and how associations between vegetati

This paper describes development of a nitrate decision support tool for groundwater wells (GW-NDST) that combines nitrate leaching and groundwater lag-times to compute well concentrations. The GW-NDST uses output from support models that simulate leached nitrate, groundwater age distributions, and nitrate reduction rates. The support models are linked through convolution to simulate nitrate transp

Worldwide, large wildfires are becoming increasingly common, leading to economic damages and threatening ecosystems and human health. Under future climate change, more frequent fire disturbance may push ecosystems into non-forested alternative stable states. Fire-prone ecosystems such as those in the Mediterranean Basin are expected to be particularly vulnerable, but the position of tipping points

Stable isotopes (SI) and fatty acid (FA) biomarkers can provide insights regarding trophic pathways and habitats associated with contaminant bioaccumulation. We assessed relationships between SI and FA biomarkers and published data on concentrations of two pesticides [dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane and degradation products (DDX) and bifenthrin] in juvenile Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha

Clumped isotope paleothermometry using pedogenic carbonates is a powerful tool for investigating past climate changes. However, location-specific seasonal patterns of precipitation and soil moisture cause systematic biases in the temperatures they record, hampering comparison of data across large areas or differing climate states. To account for biases, more systematic studies of carbonate forming