Publications

Oil and gas (energy) development in the Williston Basin, which partly underlies the Prairie Pothole Region in central North America, has helped meet U.S. energy demand for decades. Historical handling and disposal practices of saline wastewater co-produced during energy development resulted in salinization of surface and groundwater at numerous legacy energy sites. Thirty years of...

The Mississippi Delta, located in northwest Mississippi, is an area dense with industrial-level agriculture sustained by groundwater-dependent irrigation supplied by the Mississippi River Valley Alluvial aquifer (alluvial aquifer). The Delta provides agricultural commodities across the United States and around the world. Observed declines in groundwater altitudes and streamflow...

In the late 1800s, John Wesley Powell, second Director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), proposed gaging the flow of rivers and streams in the Western United States to evaluate the potential for irrigation. Around the same time, several cities in the Eastern United States established primitive streamgages to help design water-supply systems. Streamgaging technology has greatly...

A recent paper by Weyer (Environ Earth Sci 2018, 77:1–16) challenges the widely accepted interpretation of groundwater heads and salinities in the coastal Biscayne aquifer near Miami, Florida, USA. Weyer (2018) suggests that the body of saltwater that underlies fresh groundwater just inland of the coast is not a recirculating wedge of seawater, but results instead from upward migration...

Interpretations of post-fire condition and rates of vegetation recovery can influence management priorities, actions and perception of latent risks from landslides and floods. In this study, we used the Waldo Canyon fire (2012, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA) as a case study to explore how a time series (2011–2016) of high-resolution images can be used to delineate burn extent and...

In terrain analysis and hydrological modeling, surface depressions (or sinks) in a digital elevation model (DEM) are commonly treated as artifacts and thus filled and removed to create a depressionless DEM. Various algorithms have been developed to identify and fill depressions in DEMs during the past decades. However, few studies have attempted to delineate and quantify the nested...

Groundwater systems are dynamic geologic environments in which water continuously flows from recharge areas to discharge areas at streams, springs, wetlands, coastal waters, and wells. Natural, predevelopment conditions within groundwater systems are changed by the introduction of wells and other human stresses that modify existing groundwater levels, flow paths, and hydrologic budgets...

Progresses in reconstructing Earth's history of biomass burning has motivated the development of a modern charcoal dataset covering the last decades through a community-based initiative called the Global Modern Charcoal Dataset (GMCD). As the frequency, intensity and spatial scale of fires are predicted to increase regionally and globally in conjunction with changing climate...

Deforestation associated with the initial settlement of New Zealand is a dramatic example of how humans can alter landscapes through fire. However, evidence linking early human presence and land-cover change is inferential in most continental sites. We employed a multi-proxy approach to reconstruct anthropogenic land use in New Zealand’s South Island over the last millennium using fecal...

Rapid population growth and declining annual recharge to aquifers in the upper Santa Cruz Basin area of southern Arizona, have increased the demand for additional groundwater resources. This demand is predicted to escalate in the future because of higher temperatures, longer droughts, less aquifer recharge, and decreased river and stream base flow. We conducted geologic studies to help...

Pliocene–Pleistocene glaciation modified the topography and erosion of most middle- and high-latitude mountain belts, because the evolution of catchment topography controls long-term glacier mass balance and erosion. Hence, characterizing how erosion rates change during repeated glaciations can help test hypothesized glacier erosion-landscape feedbacks across a range of settings. To...

During recent decades, lake levels in the Yukon Flats region of interior Alaska have fluctuated dramatically. However, prior to recorded observations, no data are available to indicate if similar or more extreme variations occurred during past centuries and millennia. This study explores the history of Yukon Flats lake origins and lake levels for the past approximately 5,500 years from...