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Sheila Murphy

Sheila Murphy is a Research Hydrologist for the USGS Water Resources Mission Area.

Sheila Murphy is a research hydrologist who focuses on how disturbances (such as wildfire, floods, hurricanes, land use change) alter watershed response, water quality, and water quantity. Her recent research has evaluated the effects of wildfire on water quality in the western U.S., and the hydrologic and geochemical responses to land cover change and hurricanes in a tropical forest in Puerto Rico.

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Developing a "fire-aware" stream gage network by integrating USGS enterprise databases

Wildfires affect streams and rivers when they burn vegetation and scorch the ground. This makes floods more likely to happen and reduces water quality. Public managers, first responders, fire scientists, and hydrologists need timely information before and after a fire to plan for floods and water treatment. This project will create a method to combine national fire databases with the StreamStats w
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Community for Data Integration (CDI)
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Developing a "fire-aware" stream gage network by integrating USGS enterprise databases

Wildfires affect streams and rivers when they burn vegetation and scorch the ground. This makes floods more likely to happen and reduces water quality. Public managers, first responders, fire scientists, and hydrologists need timely information before and after a fire to plan for floods and water treatment. This project will create a method to combine national fire databases with the StreamStats w
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College Peak wildfire in the Perilla Mountains of Arizona

Water Quality After Wildfire

Wildfires are devastating and can lead to long-term changes to the landscape. With a significant amount of our Nation’s drinking water sources originating in forested watersheds, evaluating the effect fires have on water quality is incredibly important. The USGS works with other federal and state land managers to assess water-quality after wildfires in order to help protect one of our most...
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Water Resources
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Water Quality After Wildfire

Wildfires are devastating and can lead to long-term changes to the landscape. With a significant amount of our Nation’s drinking water sources originating in forested watersheds, evaluating the effect fires have on water quality is incredibly important. The USGS works with other federal and state land managers to assess water-quality after wildfires in order to help protect one of our most...
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Fast moving stream with rapids in upper, more mountainous part of Boulder Creek Watershed, Colorado

Connections between Forested and Urban Landscapes and Implications for Water Supply

Interactions between forested and urban landscapes can lead to reciprocal effects that have substantial impacts on water supply and ecology. Air pollution from urban and forested landscapes can be deposited on adjacent forests, while forest disturbance, such as wildfires and floods, can remobilize those contaminants. Additionally, pollutants from legacy land use (e.g., mining) can also be...
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Climate Research and Development Program
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Connections between Forested and Urban Landscapes and Implications for Water Supply

Interactions between forested and urban landscapes can lead to reciprocal effects that have substantial impacts on water supply and ecology. Air pollution from urban and forested landscapes can be deposited on adjacent forests, while forest disturbance, such as wildfires and floods, can remobilize those contaminants. Additionally, pollutants from legacy land use (e.g., mining) can also be...
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Temperature, relative humidity and cloud immersion data for Luquillo Mountains, eastern Puerto Rico, 2014-2019

Supplementary data for studies conducted in the Luquillo Experimental Forest (LEF), eastern Puerto Rico include measurements of temperature, relative humidity and cloud immersion at 30-minute resolution. Temperature and relative humidity were measured at five sites; two primary sites have records from March 2014 to June 2019; other sites have shorter records within that period. From these data,
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Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program

Chemistry of water, stream sediment, wildfire ash, soil, dust, and mine waste for Fourmile Creek Watershed, Colorado, 2010-2019

In response to the 2010 Fourmile Canyon fire near Boulder, Colorado, the U.S. Geological Survey collected data to support investigations into the magnitude and critical drivers of water-quality impairment after wildfire. We analyzed chemistry of stream water, sediment, wildfire ash, soil, dust, and mine waste for metals and other parameters in order to evaluate the effects of legacy mining and wil

Geospatial data for Luquillo Mountains, Puerto Rico: Mean annual precipitation, elevation, watershed outlines, and rain gage locations

These geospatial data sets were developed as part of a new analysis of all known current and historical rain gages in the Luquillo Mountains, Puerto Rico published in the journal article Murphy, S.F., Stallard, R.F., Scholl, M.A., Gonzalez, G., and Torres-Sanchez, A.J., 2017, Reassessing rainfall in the Luquillo Mountains, Puerto Rico: Local and global ecohydrological implications: PLOS One 12(7):
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Water Resources
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Nitrogen isotopes indicate vehicle emissions and biomass burning dominate ambient ammonia across Colorado's Front Range urban corridor

Urban ammonia (NH3) emissions contribute to poor local air quality and can be transported to rural landscapes, impacting sensitive ecosystems. The Colorado Front Range urban corridor encompasses the Denver Metropolitan Area, rural farmland/rangeland and montane forest between the city and the Rocky Mountains. Reactive nitrogen emissions from the corridor are partly responsible for increased N depo
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Water Resources

Elevated nitrogen deposition to fire-prone forests adjacent to urban and agricultural areas, Colorado front range, USA

As humans increasingly dominate the nitrogen cycle, deposition of reactive nitrogen (Nr) will continue to have adverse consequences for ecosystems. In the Rocky Mountains, Nr deposition remains elevated and has become increasingly dominated by ammonium, despite efforts to reduce emissions. Currently, spatial models of Nr deposition do not fully account for urban and agricultural emissions, sources
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Water Resources, Climate Research and Development Program, Colorado Water Science Center

Extreme rainstorms drive exceptional organic carbon export from forested humid-tropical rivers in Puerto Rico

Extreme rainfall events in the humid-tropical Luquillo Mountains, Puerto Rico export the bulk of suspended sediment and particulate organic carbon. Using 25 years of river carbon and suspended sediment data, which targeted hurricanes and other large rainstorms, we estimated biogenic particulate organic carbon yields of 65 ± 16 tC km−2 yr−1 for the Icacos and 17.7 ± 5.1 tC km−2 yr−1 for the Mameyes
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Water Resources, Climate Research and Development Program

Aquatic-terrestrial linkages control metabolism and carbon dynamics in a mid-sized, urban stream influenced by snowmelt

Freshwater streams can exchange nutrients and carbon with the surrounding terrestrial environment through various mechanisms including physical erosion, flooding, leaf drop, and snowmelt. These aquatic-terrestrial interactions are crucial in carbon mobilization, transformation, ecosystem productivity, and have important implications for the role of freshwater ecosystems in the global carbon budget
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Water Resources

U.S. Geological Survey wildland fire science strategic plan, 2021–26

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Wildland Fire Science Strategic Plan defines critical, core fire science capabilities for understanding fire-related and fire-responsive earth system processes and patterns, and informing management decision making. Developed by USGS fire scientists and executive leadership, and informed by conversations with external stakeholders, the Strategic Plan is aligned wi
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Ecosystems, Natural Hazards, Earth Resources Observation and Science Center, Science Analytics and Synthesis (SAS), Alaska Science Center, Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center , Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, Fort Collins Science Center, Geologic Hazards Science Center, Geology, Geophysics, and Geochemistry Science Center, Western Ecological Research Center (WERC)

Wildfires: Identification of a new suite of aromatic polycarboxylic acids in ash and surface water

Ash and surface water samples collected after wildfires in four different geographical locations (California, Colorado, Kansas and Alberta) were analyzed. The ash samples were leached with deionized water, and leachates were concentrated by solid phase extraction and analyzed by liquid chromatography/time-of-flight mass spectrometry. In addition, three surface water samples and a lysimeter water s
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Water Resources, Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program

Summer runoff generation in foothill catchments of the Colorado Front Range

Climatic shifts, disturbances, and land-use change can alter hydrologic flowpaths, water quality, and water supply to downstream communities. Prior research investigating streamflow generation processes in mountainous areas has largely focused on high-elevation alpine and subalpine catchments; less is known about these processes in lower-elevation foothills and montane catchments. In these lower-e
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Water Resources, Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program

Signatures of hydrologic function across the critical zone observatory network

Despite a multitude of small catchment studies, we lack a deep understanding of how variations in critical zone architecture lead to variations in hydrologic states and fluxes. This study characterizes hydrologic dynamics of 15 catchments of the U.S. Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) network where we hypothesized that our understanding of subsurface structure would illuminate patterns of hydrologic
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Water Resources, Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program

Fates and fingerprints of sulfur and carbon following wildfire in economically important croplands of California, U.S.

Sulfur (S) is widely used in agriculture, yet little is known about its fates within upland watersheds, particularly in combination with disturbances like wildfire. Our study examined the effects of land use and wildfire on the biogeochemical “fingerprints,” or the quantity and chemical composition, of S and carbon (C). We conducted our research within the Napa River Watershed, California, U.S., w
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Water Resources

Wildfire-driven changes in hydrology mobilize arsenic and metals from legacy mine waste

Wildfires burning in watersheds that have been mined and since revegetated pose unique risks to downstream water supplies. A wildfire near Boulder, Colorado that burned a forested watershed recovering from mining disturbance that occurred 80-160 years ago allowed us to 1) assess arsenic and metal contamination in streams draining the burned area for a five-year period after the wildfire and 2) det
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Water Resources, Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program

Changes in climate and land cover affect seasonal streamflow forecasts in the Rio Grande headwaters

Seasonal streamflow forecast bias, changes in climate, snowpack, and land cover, and the effects of these changes on relations between basin‐wide snowpack, SNOw TELemetry (SNOTEL) station snowpack, and seasonal streamflow were evaluated in the headwaters of the Rio Grande, Colorado. Results indicate that shifts in the seasonality of precipitation and changing climatology are consistent with period
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Water Resources, Climate Research and Development Program, Colorado Water Science Center

Atmospheric dust deposition varies by season and elevation in the Colorado Front Range, USA

As atmospheric dust deposition continues to increase across the southwestern United States, it has the potential to alter ecosystem productivity and structure by delivering nutrients, base cations, and pollutants to remote mountain sites. Due to the sparse distribution of dust monitoring sites, open questions remain about the spatial and temporal variability of dust fluxes and composition across m
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Water Resources, Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program
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Wildfires in Old Mining Areas Pose Risk to Water Quality

This article is part of the Fall 2020 issue of the Earth Science Matters Newsletter.

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Fires, floods, and the future of water supplies in the southwestern U.S.

This article is part of the Spring 2016 issue of the Earth Science Matters Newsletter. 

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Image: Puerto Rico Hurricanes Map
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