Publications

Movement strategies of small forage fish (

Silent Spring was fulfilled in the United States with passage of environmental legislation such as the Clean Water Act, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, and the Toxic Substance Control Act in the 1970s. Carson's writings, television interviews, and testimony before Congress alerted a nation and the world to the unintended effects of persistent, bioaccumulative...

The Big River (BGR) drains much of the Old Lead Belt mining district (OLB) in southeastern Missouri, USA, which was historically among the largest producers of lead–zinc (Pb–Zn) ore in the world. We sampled benthic fish and crayfish in riffle habitats at eight sites in the BGR and conducted 56-day in situ exposures to the woodland crayfish (Orconectes hylas) and golden crayfish...

We assessed the quality of plant communities across a range of lead (Pb) and zinc (Zn) soil concentrations at a variety of sites associated with Pb mining in southeast Missouri, USA. In a novel application, two standard floristic quality measures, Mean Coefficient of Conservatism (Mean C) and Floristic Quality Index (FQI), were examined in relation to concentrations of Pb and Zn, soil...

We applied Hyperion sensor satellite data acquired by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite in conjunction with reconnaissance surveys to map the occurrences of the invasive Chinese tallow tree (Triadica sebifera) in the Toledo Bend Reservoir study area of northwestern Louisiana and northeastern Texas. The rationale for application of high...

A statewide study was performed to develop regional regression equations for estimating selected annual exceedance-probability statistics for ungaged stream sites in Iowa. The study area comprises streamgages located within Iowa and 50 miles beyond the State’s borders. Annual exceedance-probability estimates were computed for 518 streamgages by using the expected moments algorithm to fit...

The former chloralkali facility in Berlin, New Hampshire, was designated a Superfund site in 2005. Historic paper mill activities resulted in the contamination of groundwater, surface water, and sediments with many organic compounds and mercury (Hg). Hg continues to seep into the Androscoggin River in elemental form through bedrock fractures. The objective of this study was to spatially

The Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) funds over 100 wetland restoration projects across Louisiana. Integral to the success of CWPPRA is its long-term monitoring program, which enables State and Federal agencies to determine the effectiveness of each restoration effort. One component of this monitoring program is the classification of high-resolution...

To evaluate the use of general-purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs) to improve the performance of MODFLOW, an unstructured preconditioned conjugate gradient (UPCG) solver has been developed. The UPCG solver uses a compressed sparse row storage scheme and includes Jacobi, zero fill-in incomplete, and modified-incomplete lower-upper (LU) factorization, and generalized least-squares...

The U.S. Geological Survey collects groundwater data and conducts studies to monitor hydrologic conditions, better define groundwater resources, and address problems related to water supply, water use, and water quality. In Georgia, water levels were monitored continuously at 186 wells during calendar year 2010 and at 181 wells during calendar year 2011. Because of missing data or short...

The 2005 hurricane season was devastating for the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Hurricane Katrina caused significant degradation of the barrier islands that compose the Gulf Islands National Seashore (GUIS). Because of the ability of coastal barrier islands to help mitigate hurricane damage to the mainland, restoring these habitats prior to the onset of future storms will help protect the...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, identified high-water marks after two floods in Vermont during 2011. Following a snowy winter, new monthly precipitation records were set in Burlington, Vermont, in April and May 2011, causing extensive flooding from April through June. The spring 2011 flooding resulted in a new record for stage (103...