Publications

Endocrine disrupting contaminants are of continuing concern for potentially contributing to reproductive dysfunction in largemouth and smallmouth bass in the Chesapeake Bay watershed (CBW) and elsewhere. Exposures to atrazine (ATR) have been hypothesized to have estrogenic effects on vertebrate endocrine systems. The incidence of intersex in male smallmouth bass from some regions of CBW...

The Pleistocene- and Cretaceous-age sediments underlying Long Island, New York, compose an important sole-source aquifer system that is nearly 2,000 feet thick in some areas. Sediment characteristics of importance for water supply include water-transmitting properties—horizontal and vertical hydraulic conductivity—and the distribution of lignite, which provides an important control on...

Increases in temperature are expected to facilitate encroachment of tropical mangrove forests into temperate salt marshes, yet the effects on ecosystem services are understudied. Our work was conducted along a mangrove expansion front in Louisiana (USA), an area where coastal wetlands are in rapid decline due to compounding factors, including reduced sediment supply, rising sea level...

Examining vital rates helps clarify how environmental characteristics, biological resources and human activities affect population growth. Carapace lengths were gathered for 241 Kemp’s ridley Lepidochelys kempii sea turtles that were marked and recaptured (n = 23) between 2011 and 2019 at a foraging location in northwest Florida, USA. There was a strong correlation between length, width...

Groundwater discharge zones connect aquifers to surface water, generating baseflow and serving as ecosystem control points across aquatic ecosystems. The influence of groundwater discharge on surface flow connectivity, fate and transport of contaminants and nutrients, and thermal habitat depends strongly on hydrologic characteristics such as the spatial distribution, age, and depth of...

During water years (WY) 2013–2017, the U.S. Geological Survey, National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Project, sampled the National Water Quality Network – Rivers and Streams (NWQN) year-round and reported on 221 pesticides at 72 sites across the United States in agricultural, developed, and mixed land use watersheds. The Pesticide Toxicity Index (PTI) was used to estimate the...

The prediction of wave runup, as well as its components, time-averaged setup and the time-varying swash, is a key element of coastal storm hazard assessments, as wave runup controls the transitions between morphodynamic response types such as dune erosion and overwash, and the potential for flooding by wave overtopping. While theoretically able to simulate the dominant low-frequency...

The Everglades Depth Estimation Network (EDEN) is an integrated network of water-level gages, interpolation models that estimate daily water-level data at ungaged locations, and applications that generate derived hydrologic data across the freshwater part of the Greater Everglades landscape. Version 3 (V3) of the EDEN interpolation surface-water model is the most recent update, replacing...

Hydrology is a critical driver controlling mangrove wetlands structural and functional attributes at different spatial and temporal scales. Yet, human activities have negatively affected hydrology, causing mangrove diebacks and coverage loss worldwide. In fact, the assessment of mangrove water budgets, impacted by natural and human disturbances, is limited due to a lack of long-term data...

During winter 2017–18 coastal areas of New England were impacted by the January 4, and March 2–4, 2018, nor’easters. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), under an interagency agreement with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), collected total water level data (the combination of tide, storm surge, wave runup and setup, and freshwater input) using the North American Vertical...

Mercury (Hg) has been a contaminant of concern for several decades in South Florida, particularly in the Florida Everglades. The transport and bioavailability of Hg in aquatic systems is intimately linked to dissolved organic carbon (DOC). In aquatic systems, Hg can be converted to methylmercury (MeHg), which is the form of Hg that bioaccumulates in food webs. The bioaccumulation of MeHg...

Slightly brackish groundwater contaminated by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) at a Superfund site in the Central Valley of California was pumped from 250 feet below land surface to a water storage tank using solar power and then gravity‐fed into 18, 330‐gallon intermediate bulk containers (totes) as follows: (1) Five totes contained planting medium with three salt‐tolerant hybrid...