Unified Interior Regions
Region 4: Mississippi Basin
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Watershed Restoration & Protection Studies (319 Monitoring) - Mississippi
The USGS-MWSC partners with various federal, state and local cooperating agencies to implement Monitoring Plans for watershed restoration or protection projects. The purpose of monitoring is to measure change in water quality throughout the duration of watershed specific restoration efforts targeted to remediate specific pollutants of concern. The goal is to document, using defensible...
Water Resources of Louisiana’s Parishes
The USGS is summarizing basic information on water resources for each parish in Louisiana and presenting the information in fact-sheet format. Information presented includes groundwater and surface-water availability, quality, development, use, and trends. These brief summaries of water resources will provide parish officials, local officials and concerned citizens with information needed to...
A Method for Identifying Karst Features in the Ozarks and Their Correlation to Ground-Water Quality Impacts
Short Title: Ozark Karst Study
Project Chiefs: Tim Kresse (USGS-Water), Phil Hays (USGS-Water), James Kaufmann (USGS-Geography), Mark Hudson (USGS-Geology), Esther Stroh (USGS-Biology)
Cooperator: U.S. Geological Survey
Project Time Frame: 2007 - 2011
Three major physiographic provinces in the Ozark Plateaus in Arkansas and Missouri include diverse topography and...
Assessing the Influence of the Davis Pond Freshwater Diversion on Water-Quality in Waterways and Marshes of Barataria Preserve
In 2002, the Davis Pond Freshwater Diversion began diverting up to 10,000 cfs of Mississippi River water into the waters surrounding the Barataria Preserve of the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve. Previously, precipitation, local surface-water runoff, and occasional marine intrusion largely determined quality of surface and marsh porewaters at the Preserve. The new influx of...
Mississippi Hydrologic Unit Code Map
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Natural Resources Conservation Service, Mississippi Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Forest Service, and the Mississippi Automated Resource Information System developed a 1:24,000-scale Watershed Boundary Dataset for Mississippi...
Physical soil properties of wetlands, and the hydrology of tidal swamp, tidal creeks, adjacent rivers, and adjacent marshes along the coastal gradient of palustrine, oligohaline, and mesohaline sites in relation to drought, storm, and tidal events
The LaWSC, in collaboration with researchers from the National Wetlands Research Center (NWRC), the NRP program, Auburn University, and Clemson University, is documenting conditions in tidal swamps in Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina as a baseline with which to compare future data to assess the impacts of climate change in such areas. Tidal swamps in these states offer an array of...
Water quality monitoring in the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, Lake Borgne, and adjacent waterways in southeastern Louisiana, 2009 to 2013
In early 2009, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) constructed a rock barrier across the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO), a navigation channel between the Port of New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. In August 2008, prior to construction of the rock barrier, the LaWSC, in cooperation with the USACE, began monitoring specific conductance, dissolved oxygen, and discharge in the MRGO to...
Assessment of water quality and soil conditions at the Bayou aux Carpes 404(C) property wetlands
Wetlands in the Bayou aux Carpes area, south of New Orleans, La., currently are isolated from direct inflow of storm water runoff by levees and spoil banks. The USACE is considering removal of a spoil bank that would allow storm-water runoff to flow through and across the wetlands. . The wetlands consist of floating marshes, with a predominately organic substrate, and forested wetlands, some...
Principal Aquifer Susceptibility Study
Short Title: Principal Aquifers
Project Chief: Brian Clark
Cooperator: U.S. Geological Survey National Water-Quality Assessment Program
Project Time Frame: May 2008 - Sept 2009
The principal aquifer study will use regional ground-water MODFLOW models and...
Mississippi Embayment Regional Aquifer Study (MERAS)
Short Title: MERAS Model
Project Chief: Brian Clark
Cooperator: U.S. Geological Survey Office of Ground-Water Resources Program
Project Time Frame: January 2006 - 2009
Fresh ground-water in the Mississippi embayment can be found in alternating formations of...
Quality of Shallow Groundwater and Drinking Water in the Mississippi Embayment-Texas Coastal Uplands Aquifer System and the Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer, South-Central United States, 1994–2004
The Mississippi embayment-Texas coastal uplands aquifer system is an important source of drinking water, providing about 724 million gallons per day to about 8.9 million people in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Alabama. The Mississippi River Valley alluvial aquifer ranks third in the Nation for total withdrawals of which more than 98...
Simulation of Groundwater Flow in the "1,500-Foot" and "2,000-Foot" Sands and Movement of Saltwater in the “2000-Foot” Sand of the Baton Rouge Area, Louisiana
Saltwater encroachment has been detected in six aquifers, including the "1,500-foot" and "2,000-foot" sands, north of the Baton Rouge fault in East Baton Rouge Parish. The encroachment is in response to ground-water withdrawals, primarily for public supply and industrial uses, in Baton Rouge. Additional information is needed for water planners and managers in the Baton Rouge area to make...
Could a freshwater fish be at the root of dystrophic crises in a coastal lagoon?
Eutrophication has a profound impact on ecosystems worldwide. Grass carp Ctenopharyngodon idella, an herbivorous fish, has been introduced to control aquatic plant overgrowth caused by eutrophication, but could have other, potentially detrimental, effects. We used the Po di Volano basin (south of the Po River delta, northern Italy) as a test...
Milardi, Marco; Soana, Elisa; Chapman, Duane C.; Fano, Elisa Anna; Castaldelli, Giuseppe Using integrated population models for insights into monitoring programs: An application using pink-footed geese
Development of integrated population models (IPMs) assume the absence of systematic bias in monitoring programs, yet many potential sources of systematic bias in monitoring data exist (e.g., under-counts of abundance). By integrating multiple sources of data, we can assess whether various sources of monitoring data provide consistent inferences...
Johnson, Fred; Zimmerman, Guthrie S.; Jensen, Gitte H.; Clausen, Kevin K.; Frederiksen, Morten; Madsen, Jesper Coastal marsh bird habitat selection and responses to Hurricane Sandy
Wetlands provide numerous ecosystem functions such as water purification, nutrient cycling, and wildlife habitat. Avian populations are indicators of wetland health, and understanding their responses to extreme events can aid in targeting restoration efforts following disturbance. Here, we assessed the habitat selection of six coastal wetland bird...
Benscoter, Allison; Beerens, James; Romanach, Stephanie Petroleum hydrocarbons in semipermeable membrane devices deployed in the Northern Gulf of Mexico and Florida keys following the Deepwater Horizon incident
The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill from April to July of 2010 contaminated Gulf of Mexico waters through release of an estimated 4.1 × 106 barrels of oil. Beginning in June of 2010, semipermeable membrane devices (SPMDs) were deployed near areas with sensitive marine habitats (Alabama Alps and Western Shelf) potentially exposed...
Bargar, Timothy; Alvarez, David; Stout, Scott A. Asymptotic population abundance of a two-patch system with asymmetric diffusion
This paper considers a two-patch system with asymmetric diffusion rates, in which exploitable resources are included. By using dynamical system theory, we exclude periodic solution in the one-patch subsystem and demonstrate its global dynamics. Then we exhibit uniform persistence of the two-patch system and demonstrate uniqueness of the positive...
Fang, Mengting; Wang, Yuanshi; Chen, Mingshu; DeAngelis, Donald L. Plant community establishment in a coastal marsh restored using sediment additions
A goal of wetland restoration is the establishment of resilient plant communities that persist under a variety of environmental conditions. We investigated the role of intraspecific and interspecific variation on plant community establishment in a brackish marsh that had been restored by sediment addition. Plant growth, sediment accretion, and...
Howard, Rebecca; Rafferty, Patricia S.; Johnson, Darren J. Low streamflow trends at human-impacted and reference basins in the United States
We present a continent-scale exploration of trends in annual 7-day low streamflows at 2482 U.S. Geological Survey streamgages across the conterminous United States over the past 100, 75, and 50 years (1916–2015, 1941–2015 and 1966–2015). We used basin characteristics to identify subsets of study basins representative of reference basins with...
Dudley, Robert; Hirsch, Robert M.; Archfield, Stacey A.; Blum, Annalise G.; Renard, Benjamin Predicting functional responses in agro-ecosystems from animal movement data to improve management of invasive pests
Functional responses describe how changing resource availability affects consumer resource use, thus providing a mechanistic approach to prediction of the invasibility and potential damage of invasive alien species (IAS). However, functional responses can be context dependent, varying with resource characteristics and availability, consumer...
Wilber, Mark Q.; Chinn, Sarah M.; Beasley, James C.; Boughton, Raoul; Brook, Ryan K.; Ditchkoff, Stephen S.; Fischer, Justin W.; Hartley, Stephen B.; Holmstrom, Lindsey K.; Kilgo, John C.; Lewis, Jesse S.; Miller, Ryan S.; Snow, Nathan P.; Vercauteren, Kurt C.; Wisely, Samantha M.; Webb, Colleen T.; Pepin, Kim M. Influence of land use and hydrologic variability on seasonal dissolved organic carbon and nitrate export: Insights from a multi-year regional analysis for the northeastern USA
Land use/land cover (LULC) change has significant impacts on nutrient loading to aquatic systems and has been linked to deteriorating water quality globally. While many relationships between LULC and nutrient loading have been identified, characterization of the interaction between LULC, climate (specifically variable hydrologic forcing) and...
Seybold, Erin; Gold, Arthur J.; Inamdar, Shreeram P.; Adair, Carol; Bowden, W.B.; Vaughan, Matthew C.H.; Pradhanang, Soni M.; Addy, Kelly; Shanley, James B.; Vermilyea, Andrew W.; Levia, Delphis F.; Wemple, Beverley; Schroth, Andrew W. The long-term effects of Hurricanes Wilma and Irma on soil elevation change in Everglades mangrove forests
Mangrove forests in the Florida Everglades (USA) are frequently affected by hurricanes that produce high-velocity winds, storm surge, and extreme rainfall, but also provide sediment subsidies that help mangroves adjust to sea-level rise. The long-term influence of hurricane sediment inputs on soil elevation dynamics in mangrove forests are not...
Feher, Laura; Osland, Michael; Anderson, Gordon; Vervaeke, William; Krauss, Ken; Whelan, Kevin R. T.; Balentine, Karen M.; Tiling-Range, Ginger; Smith, Thomas J.; Cahoon, Donald Quantifying hydrologic controls on local- and landscape-scale indicators of coastal wetland loss
Background and AimsCoastal wetlands have evolved to withstand stressful abiotic conditions through the maintenance of hydrologic feedbacks among vegetation production and flooding. However, disruption of these feedbacks can lead to ecosystem collapse, or a regime shift from vegetated wetland to open water. To prevent the loss of critical coastal...
Stagg, Camille; Osland, Michael; Moon, Jena A.; Hall, Courtney; Feher, Laura; Jones, William R.; Couvillion, Brady; Hartley, Stephen B.; Vervaeke, William Winter climate change and the poleward range expansion of a tropical invasive tree (Brazilian pepper ‐ Shinus terebinthifolius)
Winter climate change is expected to lead to the tropicalization of temperate ecosystems, where tropical species expand poleward in response to a decrease in the intensity and duration of winter temperature extremes (i.e., freeze events). In the southeastern United States, freezing temperatures control the northern range limits of many invasive...
Osland, Michael; Feher, Laura
Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are closely watching the Gulf of Mexico shoreline to understand the impact of Hurricane Ivan. The shoreline in the Gulf is particularly vulnerable to storm surge and coastal change during hurricanes because of the low elevation, shoreline retreat and subsidence in the Mississippi Delta regions.
Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are closely watching the Gulf of Mexico shoreline to understand the impact of Hurricane Ivan. The shoreline in the Gulf is particularly vulnerable to storm surge and coastal change during hurricanes because of the low elevation, shoreline retreat and subsidence in the Mississippi Delta regions.
Today, June 30, 2004, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) announces the recipients of the first year of the Mineral Resources External Research Program, a grant and/or cooperative agreement opportunity designed to support minerals research. The grant award is split among six topics that will enhance ongoing research in the USGS and deliver products within one year.
A new assessment of shoreline change on the Gulf of Mexico, released today by the U.S. Geological Survey, shows that 61 percent of the Gulf Coast shoreline is eroding. Some areas are losing sand more rapidly than others and some areas are actually gaining sand.
America’s rivers and streams are generally suitable for irrigation, supplying drinking water, and home and recreational uses. However, in areas with significant agricultural and urban development, the quality of our nation’s water resources has been degraded by contaminants such as pesticides, nutrients, and gasoline-related compounds.
America’s rivers and streams are generally suitable for irrigation, supplying drinking water, and home and recreational uses. However, in areas with significant agricultural and urban development, the quality of our nation’s water resources has been degraded by contaminants such as pesticides, nutrients, and gasoline-related compounds.
A new map from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Central United States Earthquake Consortium shows that Central States, including Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana are among the most seismically active states east of the Rocky Mountains. More than 800 earthquakes are cataloged on the map that depicts the locations of earthquakes large enough to be felt, since 1699.
A new map from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Central United States Earthquake Consortium shows that Central States, including Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana are among the most seismically active states east of the Rocky Mountains. More than 800 earthquakes are cataloged on the map that depicts the locations of earthquakes large enough to be felt, since 1699.
Included this month:
Hurricane Isabel Makes Her Mark on the North Carolina Coast
Mayans in the Everglades?
Submerged Ice Bridge Reveals Ancient Secrets About Alaska
America’s Deepest Coral Reef
Young Tortises on Mojave’s Menu
Measuring Floods From A Distance
Is the World’s Fuel Tank on Empty?
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) researchers investigating 51 streams in nine Midwestern States found low levels of the herbicide glyphosate in 36 percent of the samples tested, and found its degradation product in 69 percent of the samples tested. Antibiotics were found in few samples.
The U.S. Geological Survey has named Dr. Michael J. Mac as the new Director of the Columbia Environmental Research Center (CERC) in Columbia, Mo.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is participating in nine of the 14 public workshops scheduled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) this fall. The Corps of Engineers is conducting the workshops and a series of hearings to receive public comment on their recently released Revised Draft Environmental Impact Statement to the Master Water Control Manual for the Missouri River system.
Contacts
Locations
Region 4: Mississippi Basin
Fork Polk Project Office
Phone: (337) 531-4522 Fax:
Fax: (337) 531-6039
Louisiana Water Science Center
Phone: (225) 298-5481
Fax: (225) 298-5490
Arkansas Water Science Center
Phone: (501) 228-3600
Fax: (501) 228-3601
Ruston Program Office
Phone: (318) 251-9630
Fax: (318) 251-0372
Missouri Water Science Center
Phone: 573-308-3667
Fax: (573) 308-3645
National Geospatial Technical Operations Center - Rolla, MO
Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center - Little Rock, AR Office
Phone: (501) 228-3600
Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center - Jackson, MS Office
Phone: (601) 933-2900
Fax: (601) 933-2901
Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center - Baton Rouge, LA Office
Phone: (225) 298-5481
Fax: (225) 298-5490
Wetland and Aquatic Research Center - Lafayette, LA
Phone: 337-266-8500
Fax: 337-266-8513
Columbia Environmental Research Center
Phone: 573-875-5399
Iowa Water Science Center
Phone: 319-337-4191
Fax: (319) 358-3606
Western Iowa Field Office - Council Bluffs
Phone: 712-323-0824
Fax: 712-322-7775
Central Iowa Field Office - Fort Dodge
Phone: 515-576-4571
Fax: 515-576-1692
Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center - Ruston, LA Office
Phone: (318) 251-9630
Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center - Fayetteville, AR Office
Phone: (479) 442-4888
Western Missouri Field Office - Lee's Summit
Phone: 816-554-3489
Fax: 816-554-9273
Eastern Missouri - Olivette
Phone: 314-567-7077 or 314-567-5440
Fax: 314-567-7641
