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Problem The Village of Dryden, rural homeowners, farms, and businesses in the Virgil Creek Valley tap several confined sand and gravel aquifers in the Virgil Creek valley in the town of Dryden . The valley contains a large moraine with complex stratigraphy consisting of continuous and discontinuous layers of till, lake deposits, and glaciofluvial sand and gravel. Sand and gravel units form the aquifers in the valley-fill deposits. There are at least three extensive confined aquifer units at various depths. However, little is known about (1) the location of recharge and discharge areas, (2) direction of groundwater flow, (3) extent of hydraulic connection between aquifer units, and (4) extent of surface- and ground-water...
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Title IV has been successful in reducing emissions of SO2 and NOx from power generation to the levels set by Congress. In fact, by 2009, SO2 emissions from power plants were already 3.25 million tons lower than the final 2010 cap level of 8.95 million tons, and NOx emissions were 6.1 million tons less than the projected level in 2000 without the ARP, or more than triple the Title IV NOx emission-reduction objective. As a result of these emission reductions, air quality has improved, providing significant human health benefits, and acid deposition has decreased to the extent that some acid-sensitive areas are beginning to show signs of recovery. Current emission reductions and the passage of time, which is needed...
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It is well know that every earthquake can spawn others (e.g., as aftershocks), and that such triggered events can be large and damaging, as recently demonstrated by L’Aquila, Italy and Christchurch, New Zealand earthquakes. In spite of being an explicit USGS strategic-action priority (http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2012/1088; page 32), the USGS currently lacks an automated system with which to forecast such events and official protocols for disseminating the potential implications. This capability, known as Operational Earthquake Forecasting (OEF), could provide valuable situational awareness to emergency managers, the public, and other entities interested in preparing for potentially damaging earthquakes. With the various...
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There has been increasing attention placed on the need for water availability information at ungauged locations, particularly related to balancing human and ecological needs for water. Critical to assessing water availability is the necessity for daily streamflow time series; however, most of the rivers in the United States are ungauged. This proposal leverages over $1M currently allocated to the USGS National Water Census Program towards developing an integrated modeling approach to estimate daily streamflow at ungauged locations, with the ultimate goal of providing daily streamflow estimates at 160,000 ungauged catchments across the United States. By assembling a diverse and prolific group of international scientists,...
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Advancing our mechanistic understanding of ecosystem responses to climate change is critical to improve ecological theories, develop predictive models to simulate ecosystem processes, and inform sound policies to manage ecosystems and human activities. Manipulation of temperature in the field, or the “ecosystem warming experiment,” has proved to be a powerful tool to understand ecosystem responses to changes in temperature. No comprehensive synthesis has been conducted since the last one more than 10 years ago. A new synthetic analysis is critically needed to advance our understanding of ecosystem responses to warming, to highlight experimental artifacts and appropriate interpretations, and to guide development...
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Tropical forests contain > 50% of the world’s known species (Heywood 1995), 55% of global forest biomass (Pan et al. 2011), and exchange more carbon (C), water and energy with the atmosphere than any other ecosystem type (e.g., Saugier et al. 2001). Despite their importance, there is more uncertainty associated with predictions of how tropical forests will respond to warming than for any other biome (Randerson et al. 2009). This uncertainty is of global concern due to the large quantity of C cycled by these forests and the high potential for biodiversity loss. Given the importance of tropical forests, decision makers and land managers around the globe need increased predictive capacity regarding how tropical forests...
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Amphibian populations are declining globally at unprecedented rates but statistically rigorous identification of mechanisms is lacking. Identification of reasons underlying large-scale declines is imperative to plan and implement effective conservation efforts. Most research on amphibian population decline has focused on local populations and local factors. However, the ubiquity of declines across species and landscapes suggests that causal factors at a broader scale are also important. Elucidation of the mechanisms driving population change has lagged, mainly because data have been unavailable at continental scales. We propose to address this need by assembling data to answer questions about broad-scale drivers...
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The Appalachian Trail (AT), a 14-state footpath from Maine to Georgia, is a unit of the National Park Service that is cooperatively managed and maintained by the National Park Service (NPS), the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, AT Club volunteers, the USDA Forest Service, and other public land-management agencies. Upper elevation and ridge-top ecosystems, which comprise much of the trail corridor, have been impacted by and remain extremely sensitive to acidic deposition. Ridgetop soils that are often low in calcium make the ecosystems of the AT more sensitive to acidic deposition than other ecosystems. Furthermore, upper elevations tend to receive the highest levels of deposition. In areas along the AT, such...
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The U.S. network of 160 weather radars known as NEXRAD (NEXt generation RADar) is one of the largest and most comprehensive terrestrial sensor networks in the world. To date, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has archived about 2 petabytes data from this system. Although designed for meteorological applications, these radars readily detect the movements of birds, bats, and insects. Many of these movements are continental in scope, spanning the entire range of the network. It is unclear whether biological or meteorological data comprise the bulk of the archive. Regardless, the biological portion is sufficiently large that it likely represents one of the largest biological data archives in the world, perhaps...
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Geographically Isolated Wetlands (GIWs) occur along gradients of hydrologic and ecological connectivity and isolation, even within wetland types (e.g., forested, emergent marshes) and functional classes (e.g., ephemeral systems, permanent systems, etc.). Within a given watershed, the relative positions of wetlands and open-waters along these gradients influence the type and magnitude of their chemical, physical, and biological effects on downgradient waters. In addition, the ways in which GIWs connect to the broader hydrological landscape, and the effects of such connectivity on downgradient waters, depends largely upon climate, geology, and relief, the heterogeneity of which expands with increasing scale. Developing...
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Groundwater withdrawals in the western US are a critical component of the water resources strategy for the region. Climate change already may be substantially altering recharge into groundwater systems; however, the quantity and direction (increase or decrease) of changes are relatively unknown as most climate change assessments have focused on surface water systems. We propose to conduct a broad scale literature review followed by a synthesis of available data, analysis and simulations with available downscaled climate scenarios to understand how recharge in the western US might respond to plausible climatic shifts during the rest of the 21st Century. We will produce an estimated range of impacts on groundwater...
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Fibrous erionite, a zeolite mineral, has been designated as a human carcinogen by the World Health Organization and is believed to be the cause of extraordinarily high rates of malignant mesothelioma and other asbestos - related diseases in several villages in Central Turkey. A recent study by the University of Hawaii in collaboration with the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency in Dunn County, North Dakota has demonstrated similar human exposures to fibrous erionite as those in found in Turkey. The source of these exposures is an erionite - bearing volcanic tuff that has been mined, crushed, and used to gravel hundreds of miles of roads. While elevated rates of mesothelioma are not yet apparent in North Dakota,...
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The purpose of this project was to document processes for USGS scientists to organize and share data using ScienceBase, and to provide an example interactive mapping application to display those data. Data and maps from Chase and others (2016a, b) were used for the example interactive maps. Principal Investigator : Katherine J Chase, Andy Bock, Thomas R Sando Accomplishments The accomplishments for this project are described below. The project team developed an interactive mapping application in R that connects to data on ScienceBase, using Shiny, Leaflet (Cheng and Xie, 2016), and sbtools (Winslow and others, 2016) (fig. 10). USGS scientists can refer to the R code in the mapping application to build their...
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Resilience science provides a conceptual framework and methodology for quantitatively assessing the ability of a system to remain in a particular state. Probable non-linear ecological responses to global change, including climate change, require a clear framework for understanding and managing resilience. However, much of the resilience research to date has been qualitative in nature, and frameworks developed for the implementation of resilience science have been either vague or focused on the social component of social-ecological systems. Attempts to quantify resilience and operationalize the concept include the cross-scale resilience model, discontinuity theory and the early detection of leading indicators of...
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As pressures from climate change and other anthropogenic stressors, like invasive species, increase, new challenges arise for natural resource managers who are responsible for the health of public lands. One of the greatest challenges these managers face is that the traditional way of managing resources might not be as effective, or in some cases might be ineffective, in light of transformational ecological impacts that exist at the intersection of society and ecosystems. Thus, managers are struggling to understand how they should be managing shared natural resources and landscapes in this new era. This project studies the decision-making process of federal land managers to illuminate how decisions are being navigated...
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The transport of dissolved organic matter (DOM) by rivers is an important component of the global carbon cycle, affects ecosystems and water quality, and reflects biogeochemical and hydrological processes in watersheds. Understanding the fundamental relationships between discharge and DOM concentration and composition reveals important information about watershed flow paths, soil flushing, connectivity to riparian zones, organic matter leaching, soil moisture, and climatic influences. Data to describe these processes - both magnitude and timing - is critical for modeling and predicting watershed DOM dynamics, particularly in light of land use and climate change . Despite several decades of data collection, a synthesis...
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One of the grand challenges of Earth Surface Science and Natural Resource Management lies in the prediction of mass and energy transfer for large watersheds and landscapes. High resolution topography (lidar) datasets show potential to significantly advance our understanding of hydrologic and geomorphic processes controlling mass and energy transfer because they represent features at the appropriate fine scale on which surface processes operate. While lidar datasets have become readily available across the United States, challenges remain in extracting accurate and objective information relevant for hydrologic and geomorphic research, modeling, and prediction, as well as watershed management. We primarily focus our...
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Problem - Increasing development within the Shenandoah Valley in recent years has placed additional demands on the region’s water resources. The sedimentary rocks in the Valley have been compressed and folded by tectonic forces to form a 5-km deep basin. Ground water, a principal component of the available water supply, flows through fractures in the sedimentary and crystalline rocks that underlie the Valley. Bedding fractures in the rocks are angled downward along the dip of the folds, allowing ground water to penetrate deeply below land surface—fresh water is obtained from wells over 800 ft deep in the Valley. Objectives - Develop a ground-water-flow model to simulate movement of ground water and estimate the...
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Mercury (Hg) is a serious environmental problem that is impacting ecological and human health on a global scale. However, local and regional processes are largely responsible for producing methylmercury, which drives ecological risk. This is particularly true in western North America where the combination of diverse landscapes, habitat types, climates, and Hg sources may disproportionally impact the region relative to other areas in North America. Even with decades of regional Hg research and monitoring, there is still no holistic synthesis of the spatiotemporal patterns of Hg in abiotic and biotic resources across the region, nor has there been a formal, simultaneous analysis of the landscape, ecological and climatological...
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This proposal brings together biologists and geoscientists to evaluate the evolution of stress tolerance and adaptation to extreme environments in plants. Stress tolerance has been studied mainly from a physiological perspective using laboratory and field experiments. In contrast, this project will take a combined environmental and evolutionary perspective using national public databases and a “big data” approach. Thus the proposal will illustrate an application of spatially integrated big datasets for basic research, a synthesis goal of the Powell Center. We will use the geochemical and mineralogical data from the USGS Soil Geochemical Landscapes of the Conterminous United States Project, digital elevation and...
map background search result map search result map Ground-water-flow model of the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia and West Virginia National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program Report to Congress 2011: An Integrated Assessment Appalachian Trail MEGA-Transect Atmospheric Deposition Effects Study Hydrogeology of the Virgil Creek Valley in the Town of Dryden, Tompkins County, New York Public Land Manager Decision-Making Under Ecological Transformation Hydrogeology of the Virgil Creek Valley in the Town of Dryden, Tompkins County, New York Ground-water-flow model of the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia and West Virginia Appalachian Trail MEGA-Transect Atmospheric Deposition Effects Study Public Land Manager Decision-Making Under Ecological Transformation National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program Report to Congress 2011: An Integrated Assessment