Publications

Coastal eutrophication in the northern Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is the primary anthropogenic contributor to the largest zone of hypoxic bottom waters in North America. Although biologically mediated processes such as denitrification (Dn) are known to act as sinks for inorganic nitrogen, it is unknown what contribution denitrification makes to landscape-scale nitrogen budgets along the coast...

Rhizophora mangle and Laguncularia racemosa co-occur along many intertidal floodplains in the Neotropics. Their patterns of dominance shift along various gradients, coincident with salinity, soil fertility, and tidal flooding. We used leaf gas exchange metrics to investigate the strategies of these two species in mixed culture to simulate competition under different salinity...

Few landscape scale models have assessed the effects of coastal protection and restoration projects on wetland morphology while taking into account important uncertainties in environmental factors such as sea-level rise (SLR) and subsidence. In support of Louisiana's 2012 Coastal Master Plan, we developed a spatially explicit wetland morphology model and coupled it with other predictive...

The City of Bloomington, Illinois, restored Kickapoo Creek to a more natural state by incorporating green infrastructure—specifically flood-plain reconnection, riparian wetlands, meanders, and rock riffles—at a 90-acre park within The Grove residential development. A team of State and Federal agencies and contractors are collecting data to monitor the effectiveness of this stream...

As bighead carp Hypophthalmichthys nobilis and silver carp H. molitrix (the bigheaded carps) are poised to enter the Laurentian Great Lakes and potentially damage the region’s economically important fishery, information on developmental rates and behaviors of carps is critical to assessing their ability to establish sustainable populations within the Great Lakes basin. In laboratory...

Fish hatcheries and other types of aquatic facilities are potential sources for the introduction of nonnative species of fish or aquatic invertebrates into watersheds. Chlorine has been suggested for use to kill organisms that might be released from the effluent of a facility. While acute LC50s (concentrations lethal to 50% of organisms exposed for up to 96 h) for chlorine are available...

Wastewater discharges to the Assabet River contribute substantial amounts of phosphorus, which support accumulations of nuisance aquatic plants that are most evident in the river’s impounded reaches during the growing season. To restore the Assabet River’s water quality and aesthetics, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency required the major wastewater-treatment plants in the drainage...

The aquifers in the Nacatoch Sand and Tokio Formation in southwestern Arkansas and the Nacatoch Sand in northeastern Arkansas are sources of water for industrial, public supply, domestic, and agricultural uses. Potentiometric-surface maps were constructed from water-level measurements made in 47 wells completed in the Nacatoch Sand and 45 wells completed in the Tokio Formation during...

Resource managers need to make decisions to plan for future environmental conditions, particularly sea level rise, in the face of substantial uncertainty. Many interacting processes factor in to the decisions they face. Advances in process models and the quantification of uncertainty have made models a valuable tool for this purpose. Long-simulation runtimes and, often, numerical...

In 2012, a map of vegetation communities on Big Muddy National Fish and Wildlife Refuge was expanded based on interpretation of aerial photographs and field data. National Agricultural Imagery Program aerial photographs were used to identify distinct communities on previously unmapped refuge units and newly acquired parcels. Newly mapped polygons were then visited to adjust map...

No abstract available.

Exploration of unconventional natural gas reservoirs such as impermeable shale basins through the use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has changed the energy landscape in the USA providing a vast new energy source. The accelerated production of natural gas has triggered a debate concerning the safety and possible environmental impacts of these operations. This study...