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Richard Niswonger

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Evaluating Riparian and Meadow Vegetation Change Relative to Climate, Restoration and Land Management
FY2015Collaborators are investigating the effect of low rise dams water supply, ecosystem functions and health, and habitat for a wide range of organisms, including sage grouse. They are assessing the economic cost and attitudes of ranchers and managers towards both low-rise dams and proposed re-introductions of beavers. Remote sensing is used to identify locations of incised streams across the Great Basin.
Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425716302619): Groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs) rely on near-surface groundwater. These systems are receiving more attention with rising air temperature, prolonged drought, and where groundwater pumping captures natural groundwater discharge for anthropogenic use. Phreatophyte shrublands, meadows, and riparian areas are GDEs that provide critical habitat for many sensitive species, especially in arid and semi-arid environments. While GDEs are vital for ecosystem services and function, their long-term (i.e. ~ 30 years) spatial and temporal variability is poorly understood with respect to local and regional scale climate, groundwater, and...
National Water Use Projects
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Water Use program, responding to directives in Section 9508 of the SECURE Water Act of 2009, provides improved water use data collection techniques as well as development of estimation methods and development and application of water use models to improve reporting of water withdrawal and consumptive use information for 8 categories of use (public supply, domestic, irrigation, thermoelectric power, self-supplied industrial, mining, livestock, and aquaculture). The Water Use program has been strategically designed to achieve multiple objectives in the USGS Water Mission Area (WMA) Strategic Science Plan, including Goal 2, Objective 2.4 - Develop a comprehensive understanding of human...
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This child item provides a snapshot of the watershed boundary dataset which consists of a shapefile with 87,020 12-digit hydrologic unit codes (HUC12) for the conterminous United States retrieved 10/26/2020. The National Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD) is a comprehensive set of digital spatial data that represents the surface drainages areas of the United States. Although versions of the WBD are published as part of U.S. Geological Survey National Hydrography Products, the version used to produce the water-use reanalysis was not archived and is provided here. This dataset is part of a larger data release using machine learning to predict public supply water use for 12-digit hydrologic units from 2000-2020. Public-supply...
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This child item describes Python code used to retrieve gridMET climate data for a specific area and time period. Climate data were retrieved for public-supply water service areas, but the climate data collector could be used to retrieve data for other areas of interest. This dataset is part of a larger data release using machine learning to predict public supply water use for 12-digit hydrologic units from 2000-2020. Data retrieved by the climate data collector code were used as input feature variables in the public supply delivery and water use machine learning models. This page includes the following file: climate_data_collector.zip - a zip file containing the climate data collector Python code used to retrieve...
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