Publications

The movement of large amounts of nutrients by migrating animals has ecological benefits for recipient food webs1,2 that may be offset by co-transported contaminants3,4. Salmon spawning migrations are archetypal of this process, carrying marine-derived materials to inland ecosystems where they stimulate local productivity but also enhance contaminant exposure5,6,7. Pacific salmon...

Non-spatial models of competition between floating aquatic vegetation (FAV) and submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) predict a stable state of pure SAV at low total available limiting nutrient level, N, a stable state of only FAV for high N, and alternative stable states for intermediate N, as described by an S-shaped bifurcation curve. Spatial models that include physical heterogeneity of...

Segmented barrier islands can be found in regions with small tidal ranges. In contrast to tidally dominated barriers, where inlet dynamics are thought to control island length scales, the controls on barrier island length scales in wave-dominated environments have not been quantified. These microtidal barriers typically have a curved shoreline, suggesting the influence of wave-driven...

As part of a cooperative investigation between the U.S. Geological Survey and the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries, a network of 22 groundwater wells were sampled from 2014 through 2020 for about 230 pesticide and pesticide degradate compounds. Wells were located in three regions of intensive agricultural land use in Alabama: Baldwin County, the Wiregrass region, and the...

Mangroves can increase their elevation relative to tidal flooding through biogeomorphic feedbacks but can submerge if rates of sea-level rise are too great. There is an urgent need to understand the vulnerability of mangroves to sea-level rise so local communities and resource managers can implement and prioritize actions. The need is especially pressing for small islands, which have...

We review the functioning and sustainability of coastal marshes and mangroves. Urbanized humans have a 7,000-year-old enduring relationship to coastal wetlands. Wetlands include marshes, salt flats, and saline and freshwater forests. Coastal wetlands occur in all climate zones but are most abundant in deltas. Mangroves are tropical, whereas marshes occur from tropical to boreal areas

This issue highlights our long history of outreach on Cape Cod in an article and video. It also features a story about our crest-stage gage network in Vermont, which provisionally hit high-water records during flash floods this summer. Also, we discuss a USGS study that examined trends of extreme low-flows across multiple continents.

Goals of conservation research include detecting and monitoring changes in abundance, understanding species interactions, detecting extinction events of imperiled species, and detecting colonization events and spread of non-native species. Achieving these goals is difficult or impossible when the target species is rarely encountered or when the number of individuals detected is unrelated...

The condition of surface water storage in lakes and impoundments is used as an index of drought in the Massachusetts drought management plan. The U.S. Geological Survey visited 28 of these lakes and impoundments at 14 single and multiple waterbody systems to evaluate their appropriateness for characterizing drought. The data collection and computation methods at each system were then...

The Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration process assesses natural resource injury due to oil or chemical spills and calculates the damages to compensate the public for those injuries. Ecological restoration provides a means for recovering resources injured or lost due to contamination from oil or chemical spills by restoring the injured site after remediation, or acquiring...

The goal of this study was to assess health of male Common Carp (carp, Cyprinus carpio) at four sites with a wide range in environmental organic contaminant (EOC) concentrations and water temperatures in Lake Mead National Recreation Area NV/AZ, US, and the potential influence of regional drought. Histological and reproductive biomarkers were measured in 17–30 carp at four sites and 130...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, performed record extensions on groundwater levels at select wells using the Maintenance of Variance Extension type 1 (MOVE.1) method. The groundwater levels estimated from these record extensions were used to compute monthly percentiles to improve future determinations of a...