Publications

The Mississippi River Valley alluvial aquifer is a water-bearing assemblage of gravels and sands that underlies about 32,000 square miles of Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee. Pumping of groundwater from the alluvial aquifer for agriculture started in the early 1900s in the Grand Prairie area for the irrigation of rice and soybeans. From 1965 to 2005...

As a result of prolonged and intense periods of rainfall in late May and early June, 2008, along with heavier than normal snowpack the previous winter, record flooding occurred in Iowa in the Iowa River and Cedar River Basins. The storms were part of an exceptionally wet period from May 29 through June 12, when an Iowa statewide average of 9.03 inches of rain fell; the normal statewide...

This report documents development of a spatially explicit river and flood-plain classification to evaluate potential for cottonwood restoration along the Sharpe and Fort Randall segments of the Middle Missouri River. This project involved evaluating existing topographic, water-surface elevation, and soils data to determine if they were sufficient to create a classification similar to the...

The success of an environmental monitoring study using passive samplers, or any sampling method, begins in the office or laboratory. Regardless of the specific methods used, the general steps include the formulation of a sampling plan, training of personnel, performing the field (sampling) work, processing the collected samples to recover chemicals of interest, analysis of the enriched...

Bathymetric surveys were conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Missouri Department of Transportation, on the Missouri River in the vicinity of nine bridges at seven highway crossings in Kansas City, Missouri, in March 2010. A multibeam echo sounder mapping system was used to obtain channel-bed elevations for river reaches that ranged from 1,640 to 1,800 feet...

Analysis of nearly 60,000 reported values of static water level (SWL, as depth below land surface) in bedrock wells in New Hampshire, aggregated on a yearly basis, showed an apparent deepening of SWL of about 13 ft (4 m) over the period 1984–2007. Water-level data were one-time measurements at each well and were analyzed, in part, to determine if they were suitable for analysis of trends...

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a summary of issues and findings related to the potential effects of coalbed natural gas (CBNG) development on fish and other aquatic resources. We reviewed CBNG issues from across the United States and used the Powder River Basin of Wyoming as a case study to exemplify some pertinent issues. The quality of water produced during CBNG extraction...

Beaver Lake is a large, deep-storage reservoir used as a drinking-water supply and considered a primary watershed of concern in the State of Arkansas. As such, information is needed to assess water quality, especially nutrient enrichment, nutrient-algal relations, turbidity, and sediment issues within the reservoir system. Water-quality samples were collected at three main inflows to...

Nitrate in private wells in the glacial aquifer system is a concern for an estimated 17 million people using private wells because of the proximity of many private wells to nitrogen sources. Yet, less than 5 percent of private wells sampled in this study contained nitrate in concentrations that exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) of...

The Comprehensive Sturgeon Research Project is a multiyear, multiagency collaborative research framework developed to provide information to support pallid sturgeon recovery and Missouri River management decisions. The general Comprehensive Sturgeon Research Project strategy is to integrate field and laboratory studies of sturgeon reproductive ecology, habitat requirements, and...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, designs and operates a series of monitoring stations on streams throughout Missouri known as the Ambient Water-Quality Monitoring Network. During the 2009 water year (October 1, 2008, through September 30, 2009), data were collected at 75 stations-69 Ambient Water-Quality Monitoring Network...

Suspended-sediment data from 18 selected surface-water monitoring stations in the lower Missouri River Basin downstream from Gavins Point Dam were used in the computation of annual suspended-sediment and suspended-sand loads for 1976 through 2008. Three methods of suspended-sediment load determination were utilized and these included the subdivision method, regression of instantaneous...