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At least 1,495 records · Page 83Linked to original sources
USGS2011

Hybrid-optimization algorithm for the management of a conjunctive-use project and well field design

Hi-Desert Water District (HDWD), the primary water-management agency in the Warren Groundwater Basin, California, plans to construct a waste water treatment plant to reduce future septic-tank effluent from reaching the groundwater system. The treated waste water will be reclaimed by recharging the groundwater basin via recharge ponds as part of a larger conjunctive-use strategy. HDWD wishes to identify the least-cost conjunctiveuse strategies for managing imported surface water, reclaimed water, and local groundwater. As formulated, the mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) groundwater-management problem seeks to minimize water delivery costs subject to constraints including potential locations of the new pumping wells, California State regulations, groundwater-level constraints, water-supply demand, available imported water, and pump/recharge capacities. In this study, a hybrid-optimization algorithm, which couples a genetic algorithm and successive-linear programming, is developed to solve the MINLP problem. The algorithm was tested by comparing results to the enumerative solution for a simplified version of the HDWD groundwater-management problem. The results indicate that the hybrid-optimization algorithm can identify the global optimum. The hybrid-optimization algorithm is then applied to solve a complex groundwater-management problem. Sensitivity analyses were also performed to assess the impact of varying the new recharge pond orientation, varying the mixing ratio of reclaimed water and pumped water, and varying the amount of imported water available. The developed conjunctive management model can provide HDWD water managers with information that will improve their ability to manage their surface water, reclaimed water, and groundwater resources.

California↗
USGS2006

Methane Hydrate Dissociation Rates at 0.1 MPa and Temperatures above 272 K

We performed rapid depressurization experiments on methane hydrate under isothermal conditions above 272 K to determine the amount and rate of methane evolution. Sample temperatures rapidly drop below 273 K and stabilize near 272.5 K during dissociation. This thermal anomaly and the persistence of methane hydrate are consistent with the reported recovery of partially dissociated methane hydrate from ocean drilling cores.

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences↗
USGS2007

Comparison of four artificial substrates and the Ponar grab for benthic invertebrate collection

Four different bottom‐placed artificial substrates were compared with the Ponar grab for collecting benthic invertebrates. Artificial substrate samples of organisms were larger and more diverse than those of the grab. Barbeque Basket samplers caught the most taxa and individuals and Beak Trays caught the least. Chironomids and crustaceans were dominant in artificial substrate samples. Exposure habitat (left or right bank) determined taxa availability, whereas sampler design determined suitability for colonization by the taxa. Diversity for Beak Tray samples was lower than that for other artificial substrates but higher than for Ponar samples. The Barbeque Basket, Bull Basket, and Multiple Plate samples were taxonomically similar. Ponar samples were different, and Beak Trays were of intermediate similarity. As qualitative samplers, Barbeque Baskets were 63 percent efficient, followed by Bull Baskets (55 percent), Multiple Plates (48 percent), Beak Trays (38 percent), and Ponar Grabs (6–10 percent). Bull Baskets required the least and Beak Trays the most replicates to be within a preselected percentage error of the mean at the 95 percent probability level for numbers of taxa and individuals, and for diversity. Under conditions of the study, Bull Baskets ranked highest, followed by Barbeque Baskets and Multiple Plates, in selected performance criteria. Differences between grab and artificial substrate samples are explainable in terms of major riverine habitats and characteristics of the collection methods.

Journal of the American Water Resources Associatio↗
USGS2005

Ground-water/surface-water responses to global climate simulations, Santa Clara-Calleguas basin, Ventura County, California, 1950-93

Climate variations can play an important, if not always crucial, role in successful conjunctive management of ground water and surface water resources. This will require accurate accounting of the links between variations in climate, recharge, and withdrawal from the resource systems, accurate projection or predictions of the climate variations, and accurate simulation of the responses of the resource systems. To assess linkages and predictability of climate influences on conjunctive management, global climate model (GCM) simulated precipitation rates were used to estimate inflows and outflows from a regional ground water model (RGWM) of the coastal aquifers of the Santa Clara-Calleguas Basin at Ventura, California, for 1950 to 1993. Interannual to interdecadal time scales of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) climate variations are imparted to simulated precipitation variations in the Southern California area and are realistically imparted to the simulated ground water level variations through the climate-driven recharge (and discharge) variations. For example, the simulated average ground water level response at a key observation well in the basin to ENSO variations of tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures is 1.2 m/°C, compared to 0.9 m/°C in observations. This close agreement shows that the GCM-RGWM combination can translate global scale climate variations into realistic local ground water responses. Probability distributions of simulated ground water level excursions above a local water level threshold for potential seawater intrusion compare well to the corresponding distributions from observations and historical RGWM simulations, demonstrating the combination's potential usefulness for water management and planning. Thus the GCM-RGWM combination could be used for planning purposes and — when the GCM forecast skills are adequate — for near term predictions.

California↗
USGS2011

A regional modeling framework of phosphorus sources and transport in streams of the southeastern United States

We applied the SPARROW model to estimate phosphorus transport from catchments to stream reaches and subsequent delivery to major receiving water bodies in the Southeastern United States (U.S.). We show that six source variables and five land-to-water transport variables are significant ( p < 0.05) in explaining 67% of the variability in long-term log-transformed mean annual phosphorus yields. Three land-to-water variables are a subset of landscape characteristics that have been used as transport factors in phosphorus indices developed by state agencies and are identified through experimental research as influencing land-to-water phosphorus transport at field and plot scales. Two land-to-water variables – soil organic matter and soil pH – are associated with phosphorus sorption, a significant finding given that most state-developed phosphorus indices do not explicitly contain variables for sorption processes. Our findings for Southeastern U.S. streams emphasize the importance of accounting for phosphorus present in the soil profile to predict attainable instream water quality. Regional estimates of phosphorus associated with soil-parent rock were highly significant in explaining instream phosphorus yield variability. Model predictions associate 31% of phosphorus delivered to receiving water bodies to geology and the highest total phosphorus yields in the Southeast were catchments with already high background levels that have been impacted by human activity.

Journal of the American Water Resources Associatio↗
USGS2011

Stationarity: Wanted dead or alive?

Aligning engineering practice with natural process behavior would appear, on its face, to be a prudent and reasonable course of action. However, if we do not understand the long-term characteristics of hydroclimatic processes, how does one find the prudent and reasonable course needed for water management? We consider this question in light of three aspects of existing and unresolved issues affecting hydroclimatic variability and statistical inference: Hurst-Kolmogorov phenomena; the complications long-term persistence introduces with respect to statistical understanding; and the dependence of process understanding on arbitrary sampling choices. These problems are not easily addressed. In such circumstances, humility may be more important than physics; a simple model with well-understood flaws may be preferable to a sophisticated model whose correspondence to reality is uncertain.

Journal of the American Water Resources Associatio↗
USGS2011

A multi-agency nutrient dataset used to estimate loads, improve monitoring design, and calibrate regional nutrient SPARROW models

Stream-loading information was compiled from federal, state, and local agencies, and selected universities as part of an effort to develop regional SPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed attributes (SPARROW) models to help describe the distribution, sources, and transport of nutrients in streams throughout much of the United States. After screening, 2,739 sites, sampled by 73 agencies, were identified as having suitable data for calculating long-term mean annual nutrient loads required for SPARROW model calibration. These sites had a wide range in nutrient concentrations, loads, and yields, and environmental characteristics in their basins. An analysis of the accuracy in load estimates relative to site attributes indicated that accuracy in loads improve with increases in the number of observations, the proportion of uncensored data, and the variability in flow on observation days, whereas accuracy declines with increases in the root mean square error of the water-quality model, the flow-bias ratio, the number of days between samples, the variability in daily streamflow for the prediction period, and if the load estimate has been detrended. Based on compiled data, all areas of the country had recent declines in the number of sites with sufficient water-quality data to compute accurate annual loads and support regional modeling analyses. These declines were caused by decreases in the number of sites being sampled and data not being entered in readily accessible databases.

Journal of the American Water Resources Associatio↗
USGS2011

Nutrient loadings to streams of the continental United States from municipal and industrial effluent?

Data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency Permit Compliance System national database were used to calculate annual total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) loads to surface waters from municipal and industrial facilities in six major regions of the United States for 1992, 1997, and 2002. Concentration and effluent flow data were examined for approximately 118,250 facilities in 45 states and the District of Columbia. Inconsistent and incomplete discharge locations, effluent flows, and effluent nutrient concentrations limited the use of these data for calculating nutrient loads. More concentrations were reported for major facilities, those discharging more than 1 million gallons per day, than for minor facilities, and more concentrations were reported for TP than for TN. Analytical methods to check and improve the quality of the Permit Compliance System data were used. Annual loads were calculated using "typical pollutant concentrations" to supplement missing concentrations based on the type and size of facilities. Annual nutrient loads for over 26,600 facilities were calculated for at least one of the three years. Sewage systems represented 74% of all TN loads and 58% of all TP loads. This work represents an initial set of data to develop a comprehensive and consistent national database of point-source nutrient loads. These loads can be used to inform a wide range of water-quality management, watershed modeling, and research efforts at multiple scales.

Journal of the American Water Resources Associatio↗
USGS2011

The Regionalization of National-Scale SPARROW Models for Stream Nutrients

This analysis modifies the parsimonious specification of recently published total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) national‐scale SPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed attributes models to allow each model coefficient to vary geographically among three major river basins of the conterminous United States. Regionalization of the national models reduces the standard errors in the prediction of TN and TP loads, expressed as a percentage of the predicted load, by about 6 and 7%. We develop and apply a method for combining national‐scale and regional‐scale information to estimate a hybrid model that imposes cross‐region constraints that limit regional variation in model coefficients, effectively reducing the number of free model parameters as compared to a collection of independent regional models. The hybrid TN and TP regional models have improved model fit relative to the respective national models, reducing the standard error in the prediction of loads, expressed as a percentage of load, by about 5 and 4%. Only 19% of the TN hybrid model coefficients and just 2% of the TP hybrid model coefficients show evidence of substantial regional specificity (more than ±100% deviation from the national model estimate). The hybrid models have much greater precision in the estimated coefficients than do the unconstrained regional models, demonstrating the efficacy of pooling information across regions to improve regional models.

Journal of the American Water Resources Associatio↗
USGS2011

Source and delivery of nutrients to receiving waters in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States

This study investigates nutrient sources and transport to receiving waters, in order to provide spatially detailed information to aid water-resources managers concerned with eutrophication and nutrient management strategies. SPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed attributes (SPARROW) nutrient models were developed for the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic (NE US) regions of the United States to represent source conditions for the year 2002. The model developed to examine the source and delivery of nitrogen to the estuaries of nine large rivers along the NE US Seaboard indicated that agricultural sources contribute the largest percentage (37%) of the total nitrogen load delivered to the estuaries. Point sources account for 28% while atmospheric deposition accounts for 20%. A second SPARROW model was used to examine the sources and delivery of phosphorus to lakes and reservoirs throughout the NE US. The greatest attenuation of phosphorus occurred in lakes that were large relative to the size of their watershed. Model results show that, within the NE US, aquatic decay of nutrients is quite limited on an annual basis and that we especially cannot rely on natural attenuation to remove nutrients within the larger rivers nor within lakes with large watersheds relative to the size of the lake.

Journal of the American Water Resources Associatio↗
USGS2011

Bias-adjusted satellite-based rainfall estimates for predicting floods: Narayani Basin

In Nepal, as the spatial distribution of rain gauges is not sufficient to provide detailed perspective on the highly varied spatial nature of rainfall, satellite-based rainfall estimates provides the opportunity for timely estimation. This paper presents the flood prediction of Narayani Basin at the Devghat hydrometric station (32 000 km2) using bias-adjusted satellite rainfall estimates and the Geospatial Stream Flow Model (GeoSFM), a spatially distributed, physically based hydrologic model. The GeoSFM with gridded gauge observed rainfall inputs using kriging interpolation from 2003 was used for calibration and 2004 for validation to simulate stream flow with both having a Nash Sutcliff Efficiency of above 0.7. With the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Prediction Centre's rainfall estimates (CPC_RFE2.0), using the same calibrated parameters, for 2003 the model performance deteriorated but improved after recalibration with CPC_RFE2.0 indicating the need to recalibrate the model with satellite-based rainfall estimates. Adjusting the CPC_RFE2.0 by a seasonal, monthly and 7-day moving average ratio, improvement in model performance was achieved. Furthermore, a new gauge-satellite merged rainfall estimates obtained from ingestion of local rain gauge data resulted in significant improvement in flood predictability. The results indicate the applicability of satellite-based rainfall estimates in flood prediction with appropriate bias correction.

Journal of Flood Risk Management↗
USGS2011

Effects of sample size, number of markers, and allelic richness on the detection of spatial genetic pattern

The influence of study design on the ability to detect the effects of landscape pattern on gene flow is one of the most pressing methodological gaps in landscape genetic research. To investigate the effect of study design on landscape genetics inference, we used a spatially-explicit, individual-based program to simulate gene flow in a spatially continuous population inhabiting a landscape with gradual spatial changes in resistance to movement. We simulated a wide range of combinations of number of loci, number of alleles per locus and number of individuals sampled from the population. We assessed how these three aspects of study design influenced the statistical power to successfully identify the generating process among competing hypotheses of isolation-by-distance, isolation-by-barrier, and isolation-by-landscape resistance using a causal modelling approach with partial Mantel tests. We modelled the statistical power to identify the generating process as a response surface for equilibrium and non-equilibrium conditions after introduction of isolation-by-landscape resistance. All three variables (loci, alleles and sampled individuals) affect the power of causal modelling, but to different degrees. Stronger partial Mantel r correlations between landscape distances and genetic distances were found when more loci were used and when loci were more variable, which makes comparisons of effect size between studies difficult. Number of individuals did not affect the accuracy through mean equilibrium partial Mantel r , but larger samples decreased the uncertainty (increasing the precision) of equilibrium partial Mantel r estimates. We conclude that amplifying more (and more variable) loci is likely to increase the power of landscape genetic inferences more than increasing number of individuals.

Molecular Ecology Resources↗
USGS2023

Vertical transmission of Renibacterium salmoninarum in cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii)

Vertical transmission of Renibacterium salmoninarum has been well-documented in anadromous salmonids but not in hatchery-reared inland trout. We assessed whether the bacterium is vertically transmitted in cutthroat trout ( Oncorhynchus clarkii ) from a Colorado, USA hatchery, and assessed the rate of transmission from male and female brood fish. Adult brood fish were killed, tested for R. salmoninarum in kidney, liver, spleen, ovarian fluid, blood and mucus samples , then stripped of gametes to create 32 families with four infection treatments (MNFN, MNFP, MPFN, MPFP; M: male, F: female, P: positive, N: negative). Progeny from each treatment was sampled at 6 and 12 months to test for the presence of R. salmoninarum with an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Our study indicated that vertical transmission was high and occurred among 60% of families across all infection treatments. However, the average proportion of infected progeny from individual families was low, ranging from 1% (MNFP, MPFN and MPFP treatments) up to 21% (MPFP treatment). Hatcheries rearing inland salmonids would be well suited to limit vertical transmission through practices such as lethal culling because any amount of transmission can perpetuate the infection throughout fish on a hatchery.

Journal of Fish Diseases↗
USGS2001

Geophysics: Silent slip on the Cascadia subduction interface

G eodetic satellites of the Global Positioning System (GPS) now permit continuous recording of surface motions around earthquake faults and volcanoes with millimeter precision. Data from distinct points on Earth's surface can be combined to infer the locations of the sources of deformation at depth in the crust. These data are radically altering our understanding of earthquake processes, justifying ambitious new sensor arrays to image active deformation sources in Earth's crust. In recent years, large continuous GPS arrays have been deployed in Japan and southern California, and smaller networks have been installed in other seismically active regions. On page 1525 of this issue ( 1 ), Dragert et al. provide a glimpse of the kinds of insights we can expect from these arrays.

Cascadia subduction zone↗
USGS2009

Assessment of undiscovered oil and gas in the Arctic

Among the greatest uncertainties in future energy supply and a subject of considerable environmental concern is the amount of oil and gas yet to be found in the Arctic. By using a probabilistic geology-based methodology, the United States Geological Survey has assessed the area north of the Arctic Circle and concluded that about 30% of the world’s undiscovered gas and 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil may be found there, mostly offshore under less than 500 meters of water. Undiscovered natural gas is three times more abundant than oil in the Arctic and is largely concentrated in Russia. Oil resources, although important to the interests of Arctic countries, are probably not sufficient to substantially shift the current geographic pattern of world oil production.

Science↗