Skip to main content
Advanced Search

Filters: Tags: {"type":"CMS Status"} (X) > Categories: Project (X) > Types: Downloadable (X)

18 results (59ms)   

View Results as: JSON ATOM CSV
thumbnail
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...
thumbnail
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...
thumbnail
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...
thumbnail
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...
thumbnail
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...
thumbnail
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...
thumbnail
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...
thumbnail
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...
thumbnail
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...
thumbnail
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,...
thumbnail
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...
thumbnail
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...
thumbnail
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...
thumbnail
Problem - Several supply wells in Oswego County were evaluated by the USGS in 1999 by using stable oxygen and hydrogen isotopes and chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) age dating techniques. For two municipal well sites (the Villages of Sandy Creek and Lacona, and the Village of Pulaski) that tap a shallow, unconfined aquifer (typically 20-50 ft thick) there were significant discrepancies between ground-water recharge ages determined by chemical data and those determined by ground-water-flow models developed by independent studies. The significant discrepancies between the times of travel of ground water as determined by numerical ground-water-flow modeling and geochemical dating techniques in Oswego County need to be understood...
thumbnail
Coastal wetlands purify water, protect coastal communities from storms, sequester (store) carbon, and provide habitat for fish and wildlife. They are also vulnerable to climate change. In particular, changes in winter climate (warmer temperatures and fewer freeze events) may transform coastal wetlands in the northern Gulf of Mexico, as mangrove forests are expected to expand their range and replace salt marshes. The objective of this research was to evaluate the ecological implications of mangrove forest migration and salt marsh displacement. As part of this project, researchers identified important thresholds for ecosystem changes and highlighted coastal areas in the southeastern U.S. (e.g., Texas, Louisiana,...
thumbnail
Current land use practices have affected ecosystem structure and processes in ways that have degraded delivery of key ecosystem services controlling exchanges of carbon and nitrogen with the atmosphere and surface and groundwater systems. These impacts are observed in the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and N pollution in our nation’s water systems and coastal areas. Improvements in databases of climate, soils, and land use practices in the north central Great Plains (i.e., NCGP: Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, South Dakota, and North Dakota) provide a unique opportunity for integration and synthesis of this information on the exchanges of C and N affecting our environmental resources. In addition,...
thumbnail
The timing of breeding is constrained in Arctic ecosystems and small temporal differences in when individuals breed can have large effects on fitness. Arctic ecosystems are generally warming more rapidly than other ecosystems which, for migratory species, can cause an imbalance, or mismatch, between when they have evolved to breed versus when it is optimal to breed environmentally. Geese are abundant herbivores summering in tundra ecosystems, and whose presence has important feedbacks on ecosystem processes. Some goose populations have already exhibited signs that spring vegetation phenology is occurring earlier than individuals are able to breed, with a consequent effect on their reproductive fitness. The magnitude...
thumbnail
The Southeastern United States spans a broad range of physiographic settings and maintains exceptionally high levels of faunal diversity. Unfortunately, many of these ecosystems are increasingly under threat due to rapid human development, and management agencies are increasingly aware of the potential effects that climate change will have on these ecosystems. Natural resource managers and conservation planners can be effective at preserving ecosystems in the face of these stressors only if they can adapt current conservation efforts to increase the overall resilience of the system. Climate change, in particular, challenges many of the basic assumptions used by conservation planners and managers. Previous conservation...
    map background search result map search result map Ecological Implications of Mangrove Forest Migration in the Southeastern U.S. Southeast Regional Assessment Project (SERAP): Assessing Global Change Impacts on Natural and Human Systems in the Southeast 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 Hydrogeology of Two Areas of the Tug Hill Glacial-drift Aquifer, Oswego County, New York Hydrogeology of the Virgil Creek Valley in the Town of Dryden, Tompkins County, New York Hydrogeology of Two Areas of the Tug Hill Glacial-drift Aquifer, Oswego County, New York Ground-water-flow model of the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia and West Virginia Ecological Implications of Mangrove Forest Migration in the Southeastern U.S. Appalachian Trail MEGA-Transect Atmospheric Deposition Effects Study Southeast Regional Assessment Project (SERAP): Assessing Global Change Impacts on Natural and Human Systems in the Southeast National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program Report to Congress 2011: An Integrated Assessment