Publications

In winter 2011–12 and summer 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Albuquerque District and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service New Mexico Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, evaluated the physical characteristics and fish assemblage composition of available mesohabitats over a range of streamflows at...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, completed a hydrologic and hydraulic study to assess the potential hazard to human life and property associated with the hypothetical failure of the Lago de Matrullas Dam, located within the headwaters of the Río Grande de Manatí. The hydrologic study yielded outflow hydrographs and peak discharges...

During the spring of 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission and the Arkansas Geological Survey, measured water levels in 342 wells completed in the Mississippi River Valley alluvial aquifer in eastern Arkansas. The Arkansas Natural Resources Commission measured water levels in 11 wells, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture...

The Arkansas Natural Resources Commission (ANRC) conducts an annual inventory of reported groundwater and surface-water withdrawals in Arkansas in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This report describes withdrawals from groundwater and surface-water resources in Arkansas for 2010. The report compiles withdrawals by county for 10 categories of water use—public supply...

Invasive Indo-Pacific lionfish [Pterois volitans (Linnaeus, 1758) and P. miles (Bennett, 1828)] are now established throughout the Western North Atlantic. Several studies have documented negative effects of lionfish on marine fauna including significant changes to reef fish community composition. Established populations of lionfish have been documented in several estuaries, and there is...

Prediction of coastal vulnerability is of increasing concern to policy makers, coastal managers and other stakeholders. Coastal regions and barrier islands along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts are subject to frequent, large storms, whose waves and storm surge can dramatically alter beach morphology, threaten infrastructure, and impact local economies. Given that precise forecasts of...

Synchronised reproduction offers clear benefits to planktonic foraminifera – an important group of marine calcifiers – as it increases the chances of successful gamete fusion. Such synchrony requires tuning to an internal or external clock. Evidence exists for lunar reproductive cycles in some species, but its recognition in shell flux time series has proven difficult, raising questions...

An appreciable challenge in volcanology and geothermal resource development is to understand the relationships between volcanic systems and low-enthalpy geothermal resources. The enthalpy of an undeveloped geothermal resource in the Karckar region of Armenia is investigated by coupling geophysical and hydrothermal modeling. The results of 3-dimensional inversion of gravity data provide...

Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used in basic and applied ecology, making it important to understand sources and magnitudes of uncertainty in SDM performance and predictions. We analyzed SDM performance and partitioned variance among prediction maps for 15 rare vertebrate species in the southeastern USA using all possible combinations of seven potential sources of...

Weathered oil can mix with sediment to form heavier-than-water sand and oil agglomerates (SOAs) that can cause beach re-oiling for years after a spill. Few studies have focused on the physical dynamics of SOAs. In this study, artificial SOAs (aSOAs) were created and deployed in the nearshore, and shear stress-based mobility formulations were assessed to predict SOA response. Prediction...

The transition from drifting free embryo to exogenously feeding larvae has been identified as a potential life-stage bottleneck for the endangered Missouri River pallid sturgeon. Previous studies have indicated that river regulation and fragmentation may contribute to the mortality of larval pallid sturgeon by reducing the extent of free-flowing river available to free embryos to...

This study investigates the relationship between spatial and temporal patterns of wave-driven sediment mobility events on the U.S. East Coast continental shelf and the characteristics of the storms responsible for them. Mobility events, defined as seafloor wave stress exceedance of the critical stress of 0.35 mm diameter sand (0.2160 Pa) for 12 or more hours, were identified from surface...