Publications

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Susquehanna River Basin Commission and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources, investigated the effects of agricultural best-management practices on surface-water quality as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Chesapeake Bay Program. This report characterizes a 0.63-square- mile agricultural watershed...

Twenty bridge sites in Indiana were evaluated to determine: the extent of scour during floods, streambed stability, the maximum historical scour, and estimates of potential scour. Historical scour data were collected by means of geophysical methods and used to evaluate the scour-computation procedures recommended by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration and 13 other published pier...

Hydrologic and water-quality data were collected at a precipitation-collection station and from two small watersheds on Catoctin Mountain, north- central Maryland, as part of an investigation of episodic acidification and its effects on streamwater quality. Data were collected from June 1990 through December 1993. Descriptions of the water shed instrumentation, data-collection techniques...

Water quality in the headwaters of the Little Conestoga Creek, Lancaster County, Pa., was investigated from April 1986 through September 1989 to determine possible effects of agricultural nutrient management on water quality. Nutrient management, an agricultural Best-Management Practice, was promoted in the 5.8-square-mile watershed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Clean Water...

Hydrologic and water-quality data were collected from a precipitation-collection station and from two small watersheds on Catoctin Mountain, north-central Maryland, as part of investigations of acidic deposition and episodic acidification, and their effects on streamwater quality. Detailed descriptions of the site instrumentation in the watersheds, field data-collection techniques, and...

Developments in Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) technologies have made these instruments potentially useful for making measurements of discharge in rivers and large streams. Although there have been several laboratory studies and some field experiments, quantitative information on the performance of ADCP's under field conditions is relatively rare but essential to proper...

A map showing the altitude of the potentiometric surface defined by measured water levels near the North Penn Area 12 Superfund Site in Worcester Township, Montgomery County, Pa., was constructed from water levels measured in 35 wells from July 20-27, 1995. Observed water-level altitudes range from 435 feet above sea level in a well near Church Road to 261 feet above sea level in a well...

During 1991-92, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted a hydrogeologic reconnaissance at a site near the Rutgers University, Busch Campus, Chemical Engineering building, C-Wing. Results of analyses of the soil-gas samples, which were collected at 43 locations, indicated the presence of volatile organic compounds, primarily carbon tetrachloride, near the C-Wing building and about 550 feet

Digital orthophotos of Lake Garda basin area are available at the scale of up to 1:10,000 from a 1994 high altitude (average scale of 1:75,000) air photo coverage of Italy collected with an RC30 camera and Panatomic film. In October 1994 the lake bed was surveyed by USGS and CISIG personnel using a SIS 1000 Sea-Floor Mapping System. Subsystems of the SIS-1000 include high resolution...

Water samples collected in 1995 from 57 monitoring wells (48 shallow and 9 deep) in the fluvial aquifers of the White River Basin were analyzed for radon. Radon concentrations in the shallow wells ranged from 140 to 1,600 pCi/L (picocuries per liter); the median concentration was 420 pCi/L. In comparison, analyses of the samples from the nine deep wells indicate that radon concentrations...

We analyzed banding and recovery data of adult female American eiders (Somateria mollissima dresseri) captured during the breeding season in eastern North America. We estimated survival rates for birds originating in the Atlantic Coast subpopulation to be 0.8730 ± 0.0156 (SE) while recovery rates were 0.0101 ± 0.0080 (SE). Support for several banding reference areas of American eiders...

Pesticide concentrations in surface waters of the White River Basin are affected by natural and human factors. For example, concentrations of atrazine, a herbicide widely used on corn in the White River Basin, tended to be higher in an agricultural basin with permeable, well-drained soils, than in an agricultural basin with less permeable, more poorly drained soils. Concentrations of...