Publications

Many coastal urban areas are prone to extreme pluvial flooding due to limitations in stormwater system capacity, with the additional potential for flooding compounded by storm surge, tides, and waves. Understanding and simulating these processes can improve prediction and flood risk management. Here, we adapt the Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere–Wave–Sediment Transport modeling framework (COAWST...

River ice plays a critical role in controlling streamflow in cold regions. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) qualifies affected water-level measurements and inferred streamflow by ice conditions at a date later than the day of the actual measurements. This study introduces a novel computer vision-based framework, River Ice-Network (RIce-Net), that uses the USGS nationwide network of...

An ecological threshold is the point at which a comparatively small environmental change triggers an abrupt and disproportionately large ecological response. In the face of accelerating climate change, there is concern that abrupt ecosystem transformations will become more widespread as critical ecological thresholds are crossed. There has been ongoing debate, however, regarding the...

Water temperature can vary substantially even across short distances within the same sub-watershed. Accurate prediction of stream water temperature at fine spatial resolutions (i.e., fine scales, ≤ 1 km) enables precise interventions to maintain water quality and protect aquatic habitats. Although spatiotemporal models have made substantial progress in spatially coarse time series...

In 2016, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) carried out a hydraulic study within the upper Delaware River Basin for the purpose of determining the time of travel for water releases from the Brookfield Renewable U.S. hydroelectric plant at Lake Wallenpaupack, Pennsylvania, to reach the USGS streamgage located on the Delaware River at Montague, New Jersey (site number 01438500). From...

Reduction in point sources of nitrogen has led to improvement in water quality of the Long Island Sound (LIS) since 2000, but changes in nonpoint sources are less clear. A significant yet poorly quantified nonpoint nitrogen source is the forested landscape. Because a large proportion of the LIS basin is forested, even small areal inputs from the forested landscape have a large cumulative...

No abstract available.

The chemistry of headwater streams is a key indicator of the health of riparian zones and surrounding terrestrial ecosystems. This chemistry is shaped by biogeochemical processes, including chemical weathering, and anthropogenic activities that interact with one another and are sensitive to climate. Elucidating trends in streamwater chemistry and the drivers that underpin them is...

Excessive nitrogen discharge is a major concern for the Long Island Sound. Programs have been implemented to reduce point sources of nitrogen to the sound, but little is known about the nonpoint sources. This study aims to better understand the current groundwater contributions of nitrogen from nonpoint sources in the Long Island Sound watershed. During the spring and summer of 2022, the...

Defining the accuracy and uncertainties of scientific data products is critical to the usability and trustworthiness of scientific information for environmental management and conservation purposes, such as coastal resource prioritization, design, adaptation, and mitigation. The U.S. Geological Survey has a new decadal-scale coastal change assessment product that synthesizes nearly two...

Benthic biological processes influence seabed heterogeneity and contribute to vari- ability in geoacoustic properties. To investigate these relationships, measurements were conducted to quantify spatial variability in the upper few decimeters of sediment near the water-seabed interface within a fine-grained sediment deposit on the New England continental shelf. At each measurement...

Given the rapid expansion in the demand for mineral commodities that underpin worldwide economic growth and technological advancement, information regarding expected country-level mine production and production capacity is becoming increasingly important to industry stakeholders, end users, and policymakers. Production capacity can limit future supply, depending on how rapidly that...