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Results for “Journal of Hydrology: Regional Sciences”

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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
USGS2026

Mechanisms of Devils Lake’s responses to recent climatic wetting: Insights from a physically based hydrologic model

Study region Devils Lake Basin of the Northern Great Plains (NGP) region, North Dakota, USA Study focus Understanding the mechanism of Devils Lake’s responses and basin-wide hydrologic change under a wet-climatic regime using a process-based and cold region hydrologic model. New hydrologic insights Model results illustrate that three distinct hydroclimatic periods occurred during the study: Water Years 2002–05, 2006–11, and 2012–18. Following a brief time of contraction and growth, the latter two periods provide a complete picture of a wetting to drying cycle during an overall wetting regime. From 2006–2011, Devils Lake (DL) grew primarily due to lateral inflow, driven by strong precipitation and high frozen soil content leading up to the 2011 floods. In addition, during wet years, the snowmelt streamflow from the eastern and central parts of the DL Basin contributes significantly to lake growth compared to the western part. By contrast, from 2012 to 18, DL entered a contraction period, dominated by evaporation losses and anthropogenic flood control operations. Contributors to upstream drying included low precipitation, minimal snowpack accumulation, slightly lower frozen soil ratios, and minimal snowmelt runoff.

North Dakota↗
USGS2007

The FORE-SCE model: a practical approach for projecting land cover change using scenario-based modeling

A wide variety of ecological applications require spatially explicit, historic, current, and projected land use and land cover data. The U.S. Land Cover Trends project is analyzing contemporary (1973–2000) land-cover change in the conterminous United States. The newly developed FORE-SCE model used Land Cover Trends data and theoretical, statistical, and deterministic modeling techniques to project future land cover change through 2020 for multiple plausible scenarios. Projected proportions of future land use were initially developed, and then sited on the lands with the highest potential for supporting that land use and land cover using a statistically based stochastic allocation procedure. Three scenarios of 2020 land cover were mapped for the western Great Plains in the US. The model provided realistic, high-resolution, scenario-based land-cover products suitable for multiple applications, including studies of climate and weather variability, carbon dynamics, and regional hydrology.

Journal of Land Use Science↗
USGS2009

Snow and ice in a changing hydrological world

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences, the 100th and 50th anniversaries of the First and Second International Polar Years, and the 25th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year, it seems appropriate to re-examine the world's water balance and the role of snow and ice in the global hydrological climatic system. Snow cover on land (especially in the Northern Hemisphere) and sea ice (especially in the Southern Hemisphere) vary seasonally, and this seasonal change has an important effect on the world climate because snow and sea ice reflect solar radiation efficiently and affect other heat flow processes between atmosphere and land or ocean. Glaciers, including ice sheets, store most of the fresh water on Earth, but change dimensions relatively slowly. There is no clear evidence that the glacier ice volume currently is declining, but more needs to be known about mountain glacier and ice sheet mass balances. The current rise in sea level poses an enigma: thermal expansion of the oceans may account for half of the present rise, but the other half is unexplained. Although major changes in the large ice sheets take place over time scales of 10 4 to 10 5 years, marine ice sheets may be subject to rapid disintegration due to grounding line instability, perhaps accompanied by surging. Ice cores may produce remarkably complete histories of air temperature, precipitation, fallout, and atmospheric composition. A recent core through the Greenland Ice Sheet shows an abrupt transition from glacial to modern climate just over 10000 years ago, suggesting that climate is an “almost intransitive” system. Because of the possibility of abrupt climate transitions and the uncertain stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, future climatic variations are difficult to predict. The calculated heating of the atmosphere in the polar regions due to CO 2 increase is, therefore, of special interest.

Hydrological Sciences Journal↗
USGS2013

Impacts on groundwater recharge areas of megacity pumping: analysis of potential contamination of Kolkata, India, water supply

Water supply to the world's megacities is a problem of quantity and quality that will be a priority in the coming decades. Heavy pumping of groundwater beneath these urban centres, particularly in regions with low natural topographic gradients, such as deltas and floodplains, can fundamentally alter the hydrological system. These changes affect recharge area locations, which may shift closer to the city centre than before development, thereby increasing the potential for contamination. Hydrogeological simulation analysis allows evaluation of the impact on past, present and future pumping for the region of Kolkata, India, on recharge area locations in an aquifer that supplies water to over 13 million people. Relocated recharge areas are compared with known surface contamination sources, with a focus on sustainable management of this urban groundwater resource. The study highlights the impacts of pumping on water sources for long-term development of stressed city aquifers and for future water supply in deltaic and floodplain regions of the world.

West Bengal↗
USGS2009

An intercomparison of hydrological network-design technologies

Two network-design technologies are compared by random sub-sampling of actual streamflow data. The technologies, Network Analysis for Regional Information (NARI) and Network Analysis Using Generalized Least Squares (NAUGLS), have a common objective, viz. to maximize regional information within a limited budget and time horizon. The data used for intercomparison are from a network of 146 streamgauges in the central part of the United States. In general, the results for the illustrative example indicate that the NAUGLS method conveys more information than the NARI method to the network designer interested in maximizing regional information about mean annual flows with a limited budget.

Hydrological Sciences Journal↗
USGS2002

Linking the pacific decadal oscillation to seasonal stream discharge patterns in Southeast Alaska

This study identified and examined differences in Southeast Alaskan streamflow patterns between the two most recent modes of the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO). Identifying relationships between the PDO and specific regional phenomena is important for understanding climate variability, interpreting historical hydrological variability, and improving water-resources forecasting. Stream discharge data from six watersheds in Southeast Alaska were divided into cold-PDO (1947-1976) and warm-PDO (1977-1998) subsets. For all watersheds, the average annual streamflows during cold-PDO years were not significantly different from warm-PDO years. Monthly and seasonal discharges, however, did differ significantly between the two subsets, with the warm-PDO winter flows being typically higher than the cold-PDO winter flows and the warm-PDO summer flows being typically lower than the cold-PDO flows. These results were consistent with and driven by observed temperature and snowfall patterns for the region. During warm-PDO winters, precipitation fell as rain and ran-off immediately, causing higher than normal winter streamflow. During cold-PDO winters, precipitation was stored as snow and ran off during the summer snowmelt, creating greater summer streamflows. The Mendenhall River was unique in that it experienced higher flows for all seasons during the warm-PDO relative to the cold-PDO. The large amount of Mendenhall River discharge caused by glacial melt during warm-PDO summers offset any flow reduction caused by lack of snow accumulation during warm-PDO winters. The effect of the PDO on Southeast Alaskan watersheds differs from other regions of the Pacific Coast of North America in that monthly/seasonal discharge patterns changed dramatically with the switch in PDO modes but annual discharge did not. ?? 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Journal of Hydrology↗
USGS2018

Findings and lessons learned from the assessment of the Mexico-United States transboundary San Pedro and Santa Cruz aquifers: The utility of social science in applied hydrologic research

Study Region This study region encompasses the Transboundary San Pedro and Santa Cruz aquifers which are shared between the states of Sonora (Mexico) and Arizona (US). Special regional considerations include a semi-arid climate, basin-fill aquifers with predominantly montane recharge areas, economic drivers in the mining, trade, and military sectors, groundwater-dependent cities with expanding cones of depression, interbasin groundwater transfers, ground- and surface-water contamination, and protected aquatic and riparian habitats that act as significant migration corridors for hundreds of species, including some that are threatened and endangered. Study Focus We focus on lessons learned from the hydrologic assessment of the Transboundary San Pedro and Santa Cruz aquifers. We conducted the work, in two phases: (1) laying the groundwork and (2) implementation. The “laying the groundwork” phase consisted of binational meetings with stakeholders and key actors (agencies and individuals), and the development of an understanding of the physical, institutional, historical, and socio-political context. This led to signing of the binational Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program (TAAP) agreement in 2009 and detailed the process for cooperation and coordination in the assessment of shared aquifers. The implementation phase began with an agreement to proceed with the study of four “focus” aquifers (Santa Cruz, San Pedro, Mesilla (Conejos-Médanos in Mexico), and Hueco Bolson (Bolsón del Hueco in Mexico)) and development of associated technical teams. Though we do include a brief discussion of the lessons learned from the physical science portion of the study, the results have been described and published elsewhere. The bulk of the paper instead focuses on the findings and lessons learned from the integration of social-science perspectives into a largely physical-science based program, since there is a growing recognition of the need for this type of approach especially in the management and assessment of transboundary aquifers. New Hydrological Insights for the Region The Sonora-Arizona effort succeeded because both countries were adequately represented, and because of flexibility of skills and ability of teams comprising both university and government scientists. Teams included social and earth scientists. Including the social sciences was critical to research design and implementation, and to addressing the cultural, institutional, and socio-political contexts of transboundary aquifer assessment. Significant components of the continuing implementation phase include strategic planning, data compilation and analysis, cross-border integration of datasets, geophysical and geochemical surveys, and internal, peer, and stakeholder engagement.

Arizona, Sonora↗
USGS1987

Diagenesis and fluid flow in the San Juan Basin, New Mexico - regional zonation in the mineralogy and stable isotope composition of clay minerals in sandstone.

The Westwater Canyon Member of the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation is a relatively homogeneous, hydrologically continuous 100-m-thick sequence of massive fluvial sandstone, bounded above and below by relatively heterogeneous, hydrologically discontinuous units and has served as a primary conduit for fluids within this stratigraphic interval. Patterns of mineral-fluid reactions suggest a basinwide hydrologic regime in which warm, evolved fluids migrated up-dip from the center of the basin under the influence of a regional hydraulic head. -from Authors

American Journal of Science↗
USGS2011

Has the magnitude of floods across the USA changed with global CO2 levels?

Statistical relationships between annual floods at 200 long-term (85–127 years of record) streamgauges in the coterminous United States and the global mean carbon dioxide concentration (GMCO2) record are explored. The streamgauge locations are limited to those with little or no regulation or urban development. The coterminous US is divided into four large regions and stationary bootstrapping is used to evaluate if the patterns of these statistical associations are significantly different from what would be expected under the null hypothesis that flood magnitudes are independent of GMCO2. In none of the four regions defined in this study is there strong statistical evidence for flood magnitudes increasing with increasing GMCO2. One region, the southwest, showed a statistically significant negative relationship between GMCO2 and flood magnitudes. The statistical methods applied compensate both for the inter-site correlation of flood magnitudes and the shorter-term (up to a few decades) serial correlation of floods.

Hydrological Sciences Journal↗
USGS2009

Simulated long-term changes in river discharge and soil moisture due to global warming

By use of a coupled ocean atmosphere-land model, this study explores the changes of water availability, as measured by river discharge and soil moisture, that could occur by the middle of the 21st century in response to combined increases of greenhouse gases and sulphate aerosols based upon the "IS92a" scenario. In addition, it presents the simulated change in water availability that might be realized in a few centuries in response to a quadrupling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Averaging the results over extended periods, the radiatively forced changes, which are very similar between the two sets of experiments, were successfully extracted. The analysis indicates that the discharges from Arctic rivers such as the Mackenzie and Ob' increase by up to 20% (of the pre-Industrial Period level) by the middle of the 21st century and by up to 40% or more in a few centuries. In the tropics, the discharges from the Amazonas and Ganga-Brahmaputra rivers increase substantially. However, the percentage changes in runoff from other tropical and many mid-latitude rivers are smaller, with both positive and negative signs. For soil moisture, the results of this study indicate reductions during much of the year in many semiarid regions of the world, such as the southwestern region of North America, the northeastern region of China, the Mediterranean coast of Europe, and the grasslands of Australia and Africa. As a percentage, the reduction is particularly large during the dry season. From middle to high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, soil moisture decreases in summer but increases in winter.

Hydrological Sciences Journal↗
USGS2012

A national geographic framework for guiding conservation on a landscape scale

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, along with the global conservation community, has recognized that the conservation challenges of the 21st century far exceed the responsibilities and footprint of any individual agency or program. The ecological effects of climate change and other anthropogenic stressors do not recognize geopolitical boundaries and, as such, demand a national geographic framework to provide structure for cross-jurisdictional and landscape-scale conservation strategies. In 2009, a new map of ecologically based conservation regions in which to organize capacity and implement strategic habitat conservation was developed using rapid prototyping and expert elicitation by an interagency team of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey scientists and conservation professionals. Incorporating Bird Conservation Regions, Freshwater Ecoregions, and U.S. Geological Survey hydrologic unit codes, the new geographic framework provides a spatial template for building conservation capacity and focusing biological planning and conservation design efforts. The Department of Interior's Landscape Conservation Cooperatives are being organized in these new conservation regions as multi-stakeholder collaborations for improved conservation science and management.

Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management↗
USGS2006

Evidence for intensification of the global water cycle: Review and synthesis

One of the more important questions in hydrology is: if the climate warms in the future, will there be an intensification of the water cycle and, if so, the nature of that intensification? There is considerable interest in this question because an intensification of the water cycle may lead to changes in water-resource availability, an increase in the frequency and intensity of tropical storms, floods, and droughts, and an amplification of warming through the water vapor feedback. Empirical evidence for ongoing intensification of the water cycle would provide additional support for the theoretical framework that links intensification with warming. This paper briefly reviews the current state of science regarding historical trends in hydrologic variables, including precipitation, runoff, tropospheric water vapor, soil moisture, glacier mass balance, evaporation, evapotranspiration, and growing season length. Data are often incomplete in spatial and temporal domains and regional analyses are variable and sometimes contradictory; however, the weight of evidence indicates an ongoing intensification of the water cycle. In contrast to these trends, the empirical evidence to date does not consistently support an increase in the frequency or intensity of tropical storms and floods.

Journal of Hydrology↗
USGS1972

Office of International Geology reports resulting from U.S. Geological Survey participation in the United States Technical Assistance Program bibliographic supplement for 1968-1971

U. S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1263, by Jo Ann Heath and Nancy B. Tabacchi, lists the reports that resulted from a wide variety of geologic and hydrologic investigations, and institutional development programs undertaken by the U. S. Geological Survey and counterpart agencies during the period 1940 to 1967. This supplementary list, for 1968-1971, includes geologic and earth-science reports of investigations in 33 countries, as well as several having regional significance. Only reports written solely by U. S. Geological Survey personnel or in collaboration with their local counterparts are included. The reports are listed alphabetically by author for each country or region. Many of them have been released in limited edition in open files, and many have been published or are in press in host-country government agency journals, in the USGS, or in scientific journals.

Open-File Report↗
USGS2002

The influence of microclimates and fog on stable isotope signatures used in interpretation of regional hydrology: East Maui, Hawaii

Stable isotopes of precipitation, ground water and surface water measured on the windward side of East Maui from 0 to 3055 m altitude were used to determine recharge sources for stream flow and ground water. Correct interpretation of the hydrology using rainfall ??18O gradients with altitude required consideration of the influence of fog, as fog samples had isotopic signatures enriched by as much as 3??? in ??18O and 21??? in ??D compared to volume-weighted average precipitation at the same altitude. The isotopic analyses suggested that fog drip was a major component of stream flow and shallow ground water at higher altitudes in the watershed. 18O/altitude gradients in rainfall were comparable for similar microclimates on Maui (this study) and Hawaii Island (1990-1995 study), however, East Maui ??18O values for rain in trade-wind and high-altitude microclimates were enriched compared to those from Hawaii Island. Isotopes were used to interpret regional hydrology in this volcanic island aquifer system. In part of the study area, stable isotopes indicate discharge of ground water recharged at least 1000 m above the sample site. This deep-flowpath ground water was found in springs from sea level up to 240 m altitude, indicating saturation to altitudes much higher than a typical freshwater lens. These findings help in predicting the effects of ground water development on stream flow in the area. Published by Elsevier Science B.V.

Journal of Hydrology↗
USGS2024

Streamflow timing and magnitude during snow drought depend on snow drought type and regional hydroclimate

Communities around the world rely on snowmelt to meet water demands, and periods of lower than normal snow accumulation, snow droughts, can decrease water supplies. Leveraging 172 minimally disturbed and seasonally snow-covered watersheds, we developed an approach to examine the effects of cool & dry, warm & dry, and warm & wet snow droughts on streamflow timing and magnitude by hydrologic region. Our results showed all types of snow droughts in all regions correlate with lower annual streamflow, lower maximum and minimum flows, and lower runoff ratios, with more numerous low flow days and earlier streamflow timing. However, departures from non-snow drought conditions differed substantially between drought types and regions. Consecutive snow droughts further reduced runoff ratios and increased low flow days, likely due to additional subsurface storage depletion. With warm snow drought occurrence expected to increase, we discuss impacts for water management systems whose design specifications may not reflect the changing hydroclimate.

Hydrological Sciences Journal↗
USGS2013

Introduction to the special issue on “Understanding and predicting change in the coastal ecosystems of the northern Gulf of Mexico”

The coastal region of the northern Gulf of Mexico owes its current landscape structure to an array of tectonic, erosional and depositional, climatic, geochemical, hydrological, ecological, and human processes that have resulted in some of the world's most complex, dynamic, productive, and threatened ecosystems. Catastrophic hurricane landfalls, ongoing subsidence and erosion exacerbated by sea-level rise, disintegration of barrier island chains, and high rates of wetland loss have called attention to the vulnerability of northern Gulf coast ecosystems, habitats, built infrastructure, and economy to natural and anthropogenic threats. The devastating hurricanes of 2005 (Katrina and Rita) motivated the U.S. Geological Survey Coastal and Marine Geology Program and partnering researchers to pursue studies aimed at understanding and predicting landscape change and the associated storm hazard vulnerability of northern Gulf coast region ecosystems and human communities. Attaining this science goal requires increased knowledge of landscape evolution on geologic, historical, and human time scales, and analysis of the implications of such changes in the natural and built components of the landscape for hurricane impact susceptibility. This Special Issue of the Journal of Coastal Research communicates northern Gulf of Mexico research results that (1) improve knowledge of prior climates and depositional environments, (2) assess broad regional ecosystem structure and change over Holocene to human time scales, (3) undertake process studies and change analyses of dynamic landscape components, and (4) integrate framework, climate, variable time and spatial scale mapping, monitoring, and discipline-specific process investigations within interdisciplinary studies.

Journal of Coastal Research↗
USGS2011

An approach to regional wetland digital elevation model development using a differential global positioning system and a custom-built helicopter-based surveying system

Accurate topographic data are critical to restoration science and planning for the Everglades region of South Florida, USA. They are needed to monitor and simulate water level, water depth and hydroperiod and are used in scientific research on hydrologic and biologic processes. Because large wetland environments and data acquisition challenge conventional ground-based and remotely sensed data collection methods, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) adapted a classical data collection instrument to global positioning system (GPS) and geographic information system (GIS) technologies. Data acquired with this instrument were processed using geostatistics to yield sub-water level elevation values with centimetre accuracy (±15 cm). The developed database framework, modelling philosophy and metadata protocol allow for continued, collaborative model revision and expansion, given additional elevation or other ancillary data.

Florida↗
USGS2021

A comparison between generalized least squares regression and top-kriging for homogeneous cross-correlated flood regions

Spatial cross-correlation among flood sequences impacts the accuracy of regional predictors. Our study investigates this impact for two regionalization procedures, generalized least squares (GLS) regression and top-kriging (TK), which deal with cross-correlation in two fundamentally different ways and therefore might be associated with different accuracy and uncertainty of predicted flood quantiles. We perform a Monte Carlo experiment based on a dataset of annual maximum flood series for 20 catchments in a hydrologically homogeneous region. Based on a log-Pearson type III parent distribution, we generate 3000 realizations of the region with different degrees of cross-correlation. For each realization, GLS and TK are applied in leave-one-out cross-validation to predict at-site flood quantiles. Our study shows that (a) TK outperforms GLS when catchment area is the only catchment descriptor used for predicting “true” population (theoretical) flood quantiles, regardless of the level of cross-correlation, and (b) GLS and TK perform similarly when multiple catchment descriptors are used.

Hydrological Sciences Journal↗