Publications

New methods were developed to estimate water use in 2003 and future water demand in 2017 and 2025 in the Seacoast region in southeastern New Hampshire, which has experienced a 37-percent population increase during 1980 to 2000. Water-use activities for which estimates were developed include water withdrawal, delivery, demand, consumptive use, release, return flow, and transfer by...

An algorithm specifies how to quickly identify names that approximately match any specified name when searching a list or database of geographic names. Based on comparisons of the digraphs (ordered letter pairs) contained in geographic names, this algorithmic technique identifies approximately matching names by applying an artificial but useful measure of name similarity. A digraph index...

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Leetown Science Center and the co-located U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Center for Cool and Cold Water Aquaculture both depend on large volumes of cold clean ground water to support research operations at their facilities. Currently, ground-water demands are provided by three springs and two standby production wells used to augment supplies during...

A comprehensive analysis of private domestic wells and self-supplied domestic ground-water withdrawals in the Coastal Plain Physiographic Province of Virginia indicates that the magnitudes of these withdrawals and their effects on local and regional ground-water flow are larger and more important than previous reports have stated. Self-supplied ground-water withdrawals for domestic use...

Samples of surface water and suspended sediment were collected from the Passaic and Elizabeth Rivers and their tributaries in New Jersey from July 2003 to February 2004 to determine the concentrations of selected chlorinated organic and inorganic constituents. This sampling and analysis was conducted as Phase II of the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Workplan—Contaminant Assessment...

Water levels in four confined aquifers in the New Jersey Coastal Plain within Water Supply Critical Area 1 have recovered as a result of reductions in ground-water withdrawals initiated by the State in the late 1980s. The aquifers are the Wenonah-Mount Laurel, the Upper and Middle Potomac-Raritan-Magothy, and Englishtown aquifer system. Because of increased water demand due to increased

The rate of global mean sea-level rise (SLR) during the 20th century is estimated to be 1.7 mm yr−1 ±0.3 yr−1 (Church and White, 2006). SLR during the 20th century was a result of thermal expansion of the oceans and the release of water from terrestrial storage reservoirs (Bindoff et al., 2007). The latter process is thought to be dominated by the melting of glaciers and polar ice caps...

Healthy riparian ecosystems in arid and semi-arid regions exhibit shifting patterns of vegetation in response to periodic flooding. Their conditions also depend upon the amount of grazing and other human uses. Taking advantage of these system properties, we developed and tested an approach that utilizes historical Landsat data to track changes in the patterns of greenness (Normalized...

No abstract available.

The article presents information on cultured quartz crystals, a mineral used in mobile phones, computers, clocks and other devices controlled by digital circuits. Cultured quartz, which is synthetically produced in large pressurized vessels known as autoclaves, is useful in electronic circuits for precise filtration, frequency control and timing for consumer and military use. Several...

This summary of international mineral exploration activities for the year 2007 draws upon available information from industry, literature and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) specialists. The summary provides data on exploration budgets by region and mineral commodity, identifies significant mineral discoveries and areas of mineral exploration, discusses government programs affecting the...

Basin characteristics have long been used to develop equations describing streamflow. In the past, flow equations used in West Virginia were based on a few hand-calculated basin characteristics. More recently, the use of a Geographic Information System (GIS) to generate basin characteristics from existing datasets has refined the process for developing equations to describe flow values...