Publications

The “National Field Manual for the Collection of Water-Quality Data” (NFM) is an online report with separately published chapters that provides the protocols and guidelines by which U.S. Geological Survey personnel obtain the data used to assess the quality of the Nation’s surface-water and groundwater resources. Chapter A10 reviews limnological principles, describes the characteristics...

Coastal wetlands store more carbon than most ecosystems globally. As sea level rises, changes in flooding and salinity will potentially impact ecological functions, such as organic matter decomposition, that influence carbon storage. However, little is known about the mechanisms that control organic matter loss in coastal wetlands at the landscape scale. As sea level rises, how will the...

Increasing global CO2 and local land use changes coupled with increased nutrient pollution are threatening estuaries worldwide. Local changes of estuarine chemistry have been documented, but regional associations and trends comparing multiple estuaries latitudinally have not been evaluated. Rapid climate change has impacted the annual and decadal chemical trends in estuaries, with local...

No abstract available.

This lesson uses real-world data to guide students toward understanding how climate and ocean variables impact coral reef growth. To begin this activity, students hypothesize how changes in environmental conditions could affect coral reef growth. They then compare metrics for reef growth (linear growth and percent coral cover) between two reefs in Pacific Panamá that are located in

Amphibians are one of the most threatened groups of vertebrates (Stuart et al. 2004; Wake and Vredenburg 2008), and the application of molecular techniques to amphibian ecology and genetics has dramatically improved our ability to conserve species and populations (see Shaffer et al. [2015] for review). Microsatellites, tandem repeats of two to six nucleotides in the nuclear genome, are...

Naval Air Station Whiting Field is located near Milton, Florida and is one of the Navy's two primary pilot training bases. Commissioned in 1943, historic operations at Whiting Field generated industrial wastes that contaminated soil and the water-table aquifer. The Environmental Protection Agency placed Whiting Field on the Superfund program’s National Priorities List of contaminated...

In 2003 and 2004, the U.S. Geological Survey investigated the availability of groundwater resources in a 160-square mile area of coastal New Hampshire (Figure 1) using a regional groundwater flow model (Mack, 2009). At that time, population growth and increasing water demand prompted concern for the sustainability of the region’s groundwater resources in a fractured-crystalline bedrock...

How isolation affects biological communities is a fundamental question in ecology and conservation biology. Local diversity (α) and regional diversity (γ) are consistently lower in insular areas. The pattern of species turnover (β diversity) and the influence of isolation on competitive interactions are less predictable. Differences in communities across microhabitats within an isolated...

We evaluated the thermal regime and relative abundance of native and nonnative fish and invertebrates within Kelly Warm Spring and Savage Ditch, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. Water temperatures within the system remained relatively warm year-round with mean temperatures >20 °C near the spring source and >5 °C approximately 2 km downstream of the source. A total of 7 nonnative...

Double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus, DCCO) were orally exposed to Deepwater Horizon Mississippi Canyon 252 (DWH) oil to investigate oil-induced toxicological impacts. Livers were collected for multiple analyses including cytochrome P4501A (CYP1A) enzymatic activity and protein expression. CYP1A enzymatic activity was measured by alkoxyresorufin O-dealkylase (AROD) assays...

As part of the National Water Census program in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin, the U.S. Geological Survey evaluated the groundwater budget of the lower ACF, with particular emphasis on recharge, characterizing the spatial and temporal relation between surface water and groundwater, and groundwater pumping. To evaluate the hydrologic budget of the lower ACF River...