Doug holds an M.S. in Environmental Sciences from the Univ. of Virginia, and a Ph.D. in Water Resources Management from the State Univ. of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry. His disciplinary background is primarily in biogeochemistry and hydrology with a focus on understanding the processes that control the cycling of chemical elements through watersheds and ecosystems. An emphasis on the cycling of atmopsheric pollutants and their environmental effects is noteworthy. He has worked as a Research Hydrologist in the New York Water Science Center since 1987 on studies that include the effects of acid rain on ecosystems, the cycling of nitrogen in watersheds, and environmental mercury cycling. His investigations have also included the environmental effects of landscape disturbance such as suburban land use, climate change, and forest harvesting. A recent interest is studying the effects of ongoing and future climate change on streamflow, with an emphasis on high flows. He works collaboratively, often with several investigators from the USGS, and other agencies and universities. Study approaches applied include monitoring of water and soil chemistry, quantifying the rates of key cycling processes, experimental manipulations of landscapes, use of natural and applied isotope tracers, and statistical and process-level models. He is also active in professional societies, has organized conferences at regional, national, and international levels, and has served in leadership roles in many organizations and agencies. Other activities include chairing a proposal evaluation panel for a federal agency, working at the science-policy interface by serving as Director of the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program, and serving on an EPA Clean Air Act Advisory Panel, as well as serving on program evaluation and advisory panels for several agencies and science organizations.
Purpose and Scope The Natural Resources Department of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Odanah, Wisconsin has requested assistance with compiling existing mercury (Hg) concentration data from measurements in a variety of environmental media in an effort to evaluate risks to ecosystem and human health and to identify key data gaps that could be addressed through future sampling....
BACKGROUND The Adirondack region of New York has a history of relatively high atmospheric sulfur (S) and nitrogen (N) deposition (Greaver et al. 2012). Adirondack ecosystems have been impacted by these inputs, including soil and surface water acidification, and impaired health and diversity of forest vegetation and aquatic biota. Air quality management, through the Clean Air Act, the U.S....
Background Although New York State has more than 70,000 miles of streams and rivers, little is known about the status, distribution, and trends of mercury (Hg) levels in stream fish, or the environmental drivers of these patterns. Streams and their riparian zones provide critical habitat for fish, birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, and serve as the interface between aquatic and...
The Appalachian Trail (AT), a 14-state footpath from Maine to Georgia, is a unit of the National Park Service that is cooperatively managed and maintained by the National Park Service (NPS), the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, AT Club volunteers, the USDA Forest Service, and other public land-management agencies. Upper elevation and ridge-top ecosystems, which comprise much of the trail corr...
Background Climate change during the past century has resulted in changes to precipitation amounts, form (rain vs. snow), as well as frequency and intensity in the northeastern US (Huntington et al., 2009). Additional changes in precipitation are forecast for the 21st Century as the global and regional climate is expected to warm substantially (Hayhoe et al., 2007). These ongoing and proje...
Problem Statement More than nine million people rely on the New York City Water-Supply System for their daily-drinking water needs. Approximately 40 percent of this water comes from the Schoharie and Ashokan Reservoirs (fig. 1). This water is transported from the Catskill Area to New York City through Esopus Creek and a series of man-made tunnels and aqueducts built starting in the early 19...
Title IV has been successful in reducing emissions of SO2 and NOx from power generation to the levels set by Congress. In fact, by 2009, SO2 emissions from power plants were already 3.25 million tons lower than the final 2010 cap level of 8.95 million tons, and NOx emissions were 6.1 million tons less than the projected level in 2000 without the ARP, or more than triple the Title IV NOx em...
Summary The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Long Term Monitoring (LTM) network has supported the collection of stream chemistry data in the Catskills since the 1990s. Trends in stream chemistry have periodically been evaluated in these streams but the most recent assessments only extend through the early 2000s. An updated assessment of stream chemistry trends will help evaluate the...
BackgroundDetailed investigations of mercury cycling and bioaccumulation have been done in the Upper Hudson River basin (upstream of the Hudson River near Newcomb, in New York's Adirondack Mountains, with a focus on the Fishing Brook sub-basin, part of the western headwaters of the Hudson River. This study is part of a National mercury study that includes a concurrent study of McTier Creek, a...
The growth of temperate forests is typically limited by the availability of nitrogen. Elevated concentrations of nitrate in some Catskill Mountain streams, which are tributary to New York City's water-supply reservoirs west of the Hudson River, indicate that the forests of this region are at the early stages of nitrogen saturation. That is, nitrogen is available in excess of the amount utili...
Problem - Acidic precipitation has affected forested and aquatic ecosystems in New York, particularly in the Adirondack and Catskill regions. Acidification of surface waters and deleterious effects on fish and other biota have been well documented in both these regions. Despite reduced levels of acidity in atmospheric deposition over the past 20 years across New York and the northeastern Uni...
Problem The Adirondack region of New York has 128 lakes that are listed as impaired by acidity under section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act. Acidity can limit the survival and reproduction of native fishes such as brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis). Chronic and episodic acidification also stresses fish, aquatic macroinvertebrates, and other biota of inflowing tributaries of these and many...
Mercury is an environmentally ubiquitous neurotoxin, and its methylated form presents health risks to humans and other biota, primarily through dietary intake. Because methylmercury bioaccumulates and biomagnifies in living tissue, concentrations progressively increase at higher trophic positions in ecosystem food webs. Therefore, the greatest...
Burns, Douglas A.
Mercury (Hg) pollution is an environmental problem that adversely affects human and ecosystem health at local, regional, and global scales—including within New York State. More than two-thirds of the Hg currently released to the environment originates, either directly or indirectly, from human activities. Since the early 1800s, global atmospheric...
Evers, David C.; Sauer, Amy K.; Burns, Douglas A.; Fisher, Nicholas S; Bertok, Diane; Adams, Evan M.; Burton, Mark E H; Driscoll, Charles T. Acid deposition has declined across eastern North America and northern Europe due to reduced emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides. Ecosystem recovery has been slow with limited improvement in surface water chemistry. Delayed recovery has encouraged acid-neutralization strategies to accelerate recovery of impaired biological communities. Lime...
Millard, Geoffrey D.; Riva-Murray, Karen; Burns, Douglas A.; Montesdeoca, Mario S.; Driscoll, Charles T. Mercury (Hg) concentrations in freshwater fish across the state of New York frequently exceed guidelines considered harmful to humans and wildlife, but statewide distribution and temporal changes are not well known for the state’s streams and rivers. We analyzed existing data to describe recent spatial patterns, identify key environmental drivers...
Riva-Murray, Karen; Richter, Wayne; Razavi, N Roxanna; Burns, Douglas A.; Cleckner, Lisa B; Burton, Mark; George, Scott D.; Freehafer, Douglas A. The present-day acid-base chemistry of surface waters can be directly linked to contemporary observations of acid deposition; however, pre-industrial conditions are key to predicting the potential future recovery of stream ecosystems under decreasing loads of atmospheric sulfur (S) and nitrogen (N) deposition. The integrated biogeochemical model...
Shao, Shuai; Driscoll, Charles T.; Sullivan, Timothy J.; Burns, Douglas A.; Baldigo, Barry P.; Lawrence, Gregory B.; McDonnell, Todd C. Acidic atmospheric deposition has adversely affected aquatic ecosystems globally. As emissions and deposition of sulfur (S) and nitrogen (N) have declined in recent decades across North America and Europe, ecosystem recovery is evident in many surface waters. However, persistent chronic and episodic acidification remain important concerns in...
Burns, Douglas A.; McDonnell, Todd; Rice, Karen C.; Lawrence, Gregory B.; Sullivan, Timothy The relative importance of nitrogen (N) deposition as a stressor to global forests is likely to increase in the future, as N deposition increases in Asia and Africa, and as sulfur declines more than nitrogen in Europe, the US, and Canada. Even so, it appears that decreased N deposition may not be sufficient to induce recovery, suggesting that...
Clark, Christopher M.; Richkus, J.; Jones, Philip W; Phelan, Jennifer; Burns, Douglas A.; deVries, Wim; Du, Enzai; Fenn, Mark E.; Jones, Laurence; Watmough, Shaun A. To better understand the effects of climate change on streamflow, the hydrologic response to both temperature and precipitation needs to be examined at the mesoscale. New York State provides a hydrologically diverse mesoscale region, where sub-regional clusters of watersheds may respond differently to changes in temperature and in seasonal...
Glas, Robin; Burns, Douglas A.; Lautz, Laura K. Widespread deployment of sensors that measure river nitrate (NO3-) concentrations has led to many recent publications in water resources journals including review papers focused on data quality assurance, improved load calculations, and better nutrient management. The principal objective of this paper is to review and synthesize studies of high-...
Burns, Douglas A.; Pellerin, Brian A.; Miller, Matthew P.; Capel, Paul; Tesoriero, Anthony J.; Duncan, Jonathan M. Little is known about the regional extent and variability of nitrate from atmospheric deposition that is transported to streams without biological processing in forests. We measured water chemistry and isotopic tracers (δ18O and δ15N) of nitrate sources across the Northern Forest Region of the U.S. and Canada and reanalyzed data from other studies...
Sebestyen, Stepen D; Ross, Donald D; Shanley, James B.; Elliott, Emily M.; Kendall, Carol; Campbell, John L.; Dail, D Bryan; Fernandez, Ivan J; Goodale, Christine L; Lawrence, Gregory B.; Lovett, Gary M.; McHale, Patrick J; Mitchell, Myron J; Nelson, Sarah J.; Shattuck, Michelle D; Wickman, Trent R; Barnes, Rebecca T.; Bostic, Joel T.; Buda, Anthony R; Burns, Douglas A; Eshleman, Keith N.; Finlay, Jacques C.; Nelson, David M.; Ohte, Nobuhito; Pardo, Linda H; Rose, Lucy A; Sabo, Robert J; Schiff, Sherry L.; Spoelstra, John; Williard, Karl W Surface waters across much of the Adirondacks of New York were acidified in the late 20th century but began to recover after the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act. Little data, however, were available to characterize biological impacts and predict recovery of fish assemblages in regional streams. Quantitative fish and chemistry surveys were...
Baldigo, Barry; George, Scott; Sullivan, Timothy J.; Driscoll, Charles T.; Burns, Douglas A.; Shoa, Shuai; Lawrence, Gregory B. Little is known about temporal variability in nitrate concentration responses to changes in discharge on intraannual time scales in large rivers. To investigate this knowledge gap, we used a six‐year data set of daily surface water nitrate concentration and discharge averaged from near‐continuous monitoring at U.S. Geological Survey gaging...
Zimmer, Margaret; Pellerin, Brian A.; Burns, Douglas A.; Petrochenkov, Gregory Paul