Publications

Extensive information is available about infaunal soft-sediment communities in the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf) (Pequegnat et al. 1990, Rowe and Kennicutt II 2009, Wei et al. 2010), particularly from the large-scale sampling effort of the Deep Gulf of Mexico Benthos (DGOMB) project in the early 2000s (Rowe and Kennicutt II 2009). Infaunal soft-sediment communities in the northern Gulf differ by

Our study supports previous research suggesting that participation in citizen-science programs can significantly enhance student learning and attitudes about science, while simultaneously promoting environmental stewardship. Providing students with the opportunity to collect scientific data through citizen-science programs can increase their understanding of local ecosystems, enhance...

Escherichia coli levels in recreational waters are often used to predict when fecal-associated pathogen levels are a human health risk. The reach of the Chattahoochee River that flows through the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area (CRNRA), located in the Atlanta-metropolitan area, is a popular recreation area that frequently exceeds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency...

Managing waterborne and water-related diseases is one of the most critical factors in the aftermath of hurricane-induced natural disasters. The goal of the study was to identify water-quality impairments in order to set the priorities for post-hurricane relief and to guide future decisions on disaster preparation and relief administration. Field investigations were carried out on St...

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, updated peak-streamflow regression equations for estimating flows with annual exceedance probabilities from 50 to 0.2 percent for the State of Oklahoma. These regression equations incorporate basin characteristics to estimate peak-streamflow magnitude and frequency throughout the State by...

River connectivity is defined as the water-mediated exchange of matter, energy, and biota between different elements of the riverine landscape. Connectivity is an especially important concept in large-river corridors (channel plus floodplain ) because large rivers integrate fluxes of water, sediment, nutrients, contaminants, and other transported constituents emanating from large...

Recent discussions of model selection and multimodel inference highlight a general challenge for researchers, which is how to clearly convey the explanatory content of a hypothesized model or set of competing models. The advice from statisticians for scientists employing multimodel inference is to develop a well‐thought‐out set of candidate models for comparison, though precise...

Groundwater withdrawals since the 1940s have lowered water levels, altered groundwater-flow directions, and caused saltwater to intrude within some freshwater-containing sands of the fluvial-deltaic Southern Hills regional aquifer system beneath Baton Rouge, Louisiana. New interpretations of stratigraphic correlations amongst geophysical well logs were utilized to revise a hydrogeologic...

The movement of contaminants and biota within river channels is influenced by the flow field via various processes of dispersion. Understanding and modeling of these processes thus can facilitate applications ranging from the prediction of travel times for spills of toxic materials to the simulation of larval drift for endangered species of fish. A common means of examining dispersion in...

A liquid culture enrichment-polymerase chain reaction (E-PCR) assay was investigated as a potential tool to overcome inhibition by chemical component, debris, and background biological impurities in soil that were affecting detection assay performance for soil samples containing Bacillus atrophaeus subsp. globigii (a surrogate for B. anthracis). To evaluate this assay, 9 g of matched...

PREMISE: One of the challenges in field biology is locating previously sampled plots. The Plot Locator app was developed to assist field biologists with plot identification and location, with or without GPS or online connectivity. METHODS AND RESULTS: The Plot Locator Android app helps users locate field plots by creating a searchable database that stores study area information, such as...

Sensor-based environmental monitoring networks are beginning to provide the large-scale, long-term data required to address important fundamental and applied questions in ecology. However, the data quality from deployed sensors can be difficult and costly to ensure. In this study, we use maintenance records from the 12-year history of Louisiana’s Coastwide Reference Monitoring System...