Publications

Background: Hydraulic fracturing technologies, developed over the last 65 years, have only recently been combined with horizontal drilling to unlock oil and gas reserves previously deemed inaccessible. While these technologies have dramatically increased domestic oil and natural gas production, they have also raised concerns for the potential contamination of local water supplies with...

Our study investigated the carbon:nitrogen:phosphorus (C:N:P) stoichiometry of mangrove island of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef (Twin Cays, Belize). The C:N:P of abiotic and biotic components of this oligotrophic ecosystem was measured and served to build networks of nutrient flows for three distinct mangrove forest zones (tall seaward fringing forest, inland dwarf forests and a...

Global sea level is rising and may accelerate with continued fossil fuel consumption from industrial and population growth. In 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted more than 30 training and feedback sessions with Federal, State, and nongovernmental organization (NGO) coastal managers and planners across the northern Gulf of Mexico coast to evaluate user needs, potential benefits...

The Everglades has been greatly reduced and is threatened by land use change and altered hydrology. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan calls for monitoring and assessment of key ecosystem attributes, one of which is abundance of American alligators. We examined 10 years of alligator night spotlight counts from Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge along two...

Controlling fugitive dust while protecting natural resources is a challenge faced by all managers of unpaved roads. Unfortunately, road managers choosing between dust control products often have little objective environmental information to aid their decisions. To address this information gap, the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service collaborated on a field test...

In October 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Central Texas Groundwater Conservation District, began an assessment to better understand if and where groundwater from the Ellenburger-San Saba aquifer is discharging to the Colorado River, and if and where Colorado River streamflow is recharging the Ellenburger-San Saba aquifer in the study area. Discharge...

A forested wetland (swamp) is a forest where soils are saturated or flooded for at least a portion of the growing season, and vegetation, dominated by trees, is adapted to tolerate flooded conditions. A tidal freshwater forested wetland is a forested wetland that experiences frequent but short-term surface flooding via tidal action, with average salinity of soil porewater less than 0.5 g...

Isolated patches of native vegetation in human-modified landscapes are important reservoirs of biological diversity because they may be the only places in which rare or native species can persist. Manassas National Battlefield Park, Virginia, is an island embedded in a matrix of intensively modified lands; it is becoming increasingly isolated due to growth of the greater Washington, D.C...

Mangroves occur on upper intertidal shorelines in the tropics and subtropics. Complex hydrodynamic and salinity conditions influence mangrove distributions, primarily related to elevation and hydroperiod; this review considers how these adjust through time. Accumulation rates of allochthonous and autochthonous sediment, both inorganic and organic, vary between and within different...

The 2011 Mississippi River Flood resulted in the opening of the Morganza Spillway for the second time since its construction in 1954 releasing 7.6 km3 of water through agricultural and forested lands in the Morganza Floodway and into the Atchafalaya River Basin. This volume, released over 54 days, represented 5.5% of the Mississippi River (M.R.) discharge and 14% of the total discharge...

There is a long-running debate in the planning literature about the effects of the built environment on travel behavior and the degree to which apparent effects are due to the tendency of households to self-select into neighborhoods that reinforce their travel preferences. Those who want to walk will choose walkable neighborhoods, and those who want to use transit will choose transit...

EPA in collaboration with the Penobscot Indian Nation, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USF&WS) collectively embarked on a four year research study to evaluate the environmental health of the riverine system by targeting specific cultural practices and using traditional science to conduct a...