Geology topics

Richard W. Sheibley

Publications and source records attributed to Richard W. Sheibley.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2024

Extent and duration of cold-water areas associated with side channels and tributaries of the lower Yakima River, Washington, September 2018–20

Previous work on the lower Yakima River, Washington (downstream from Union Gap), has identified several cold-water areas that could be thermal refuges for migrating salmonids. These cold-water areas are characterized by small tributaries that are typically cooler than the main-stem river during summer months (June–August). Twenty-seven temperature sensors were deployed along the lower 90 miles of the Yakima River at 7 locations where cold water had been previously observed. Deployments lasted from 1 to 2 years from September 2018 to September 2020 to document the extent and duration of these cold-water areas. Cold-water areas included the mouths of tributaries, alongside channels, and alcoves. Throughout summer months, main-stem river temperatures were warm, averaging about 92 days, when maximum daily temperatures exceeded 21 degrees Celsius (°C). The relationship between temperatures in the lower Yakima River and its tributaries varied seasonally; tributary water temperatures were 2–10 °C cooler than the main-stem river during summer months but 6–10 °C warmer than main-stem temperatures during winter months. The cooling effect of tributary inputs reduced downstream temperatures in the main stem by an average of 2–4 °C up to 175 feet downstream from tributary mouths. Side channel locations showed evidence of cooling, most likely from subsurface groundwater seeps, but the magnitude of cooling was less evident compared to tributaries. This study provides new information on spatial and temporal dynamics of cold-water areas on the lower Yakima River, which might provide cold-water habitat for migrating fishes in the future.

Washington↗

USGS2022

Longitudinal water-temperature profiles in Mill Creek, Mason County, Washington

In streams supporting Pacific salmon ( Oncorhynchus spp.) within the southern Puget Lowland, high water temperatures during late summer are a primary water-quality concern. The metabolic rates of fish and other ectothermic (in other words, cold-blooded) species are regulated by water temperature; salmon and other cold-water fish have specific thermal tolerances outside of which they are susceptible to infection, disease, increased predation, and decreased reproductive success. Mill and Gosnell Creeks, which collectively drain a 30-square mile area of the Puget Lowland in Mason County, Washington, support several species of anadromous salmonids. Whereas previous studies documented relatively cool water temperatures in Gosnell Creek, which drains the watershed upstream from Lake Isabella, water temperatures in Mill Creek, which heads at the outlet of Lake Isabella, regularly exceed thermal tolerances for cold-water fish. The occurrence and distribution of cold-water anomalies in less-than-ambient water temperatures in Mill Creek, however, have not been assessed. In this report, we present spatially and temporally continuous measurements of near-streambed water temperature measured using fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing for three reaches of Mill Creek during August–September 2020 when the water temperatures of streams in western Washington were near their annual maximum. Water temperature was collected every hour and averaged spatially over 1.015-meter sections of the fiber-optic cable deployed at the streambed of Mill Creek. The lengths of the fiber-optic cables deployed in Reaches A, B, and C were 883, 270, and 1,014 meters, respectively. Daily maximum water temperature and daily temperature variability, as measured by standard deviation of water temperature during the deployment, progressively decreased downstream as distance from Lake Isabella increased. However, no abrupt decreases in daily maximum or standard deviation of water temperature were detected in longitudinal temperature profiles of any of the three reaches. Collectively, these results suggest that warm water discharged from Lake Isabella was progressively buffered downstream as it equilibrated with downstream heat fluxes mediated by physical processes including riparian shading and diffuse groundwater input. Although parts of the surveyed reaches associated with deep pools were cooler than other locations, no large (less than 2 °C) water-temperature anomalies characteristic of discrete sources of cold groundwater or surface-water inputs were measured in any of the three surveyed reaches.

Washington↗

USGS2021

Nitrogen and phosphorus loads from groundwater to Lake Spokane, Spokane, Washington, October 2016–October 2019

Shallow nearshore groundwater and estimates of groundwater seepage were collected at 21 locations along the north and south shores of Lake Spokane beginning in October 2016 and ending in October 2019. Nitrate plus nitrite concentrations in nearshore groundwater ranged from <0.04 to 7.60 milligrams of nitrogen per liter. Nearshore groundwater orthophosphate concentrations ranged from <0.004 to 0.381 milligrams of phosphorus per liter, and, overall, there were no consistent seasonal differences in nearshore groundwater nutrients during this study. Nitrate plus nitrite concentrations were highest at sites located adjacent to nearshore development and similar to concentrations in water collected from nearby drinking water wells. Similarly, samples from locations adjacent to nearshore development were statistically greater than samples collected from other locations for orthophosphate concentrations. Dissolved boron concentrations, elevated values of which are an indicator of household-detergent use, were elevated in spring and summer at some locations, indicating that residential wastewater was reaching the lake. Stable isotope ratios of nitrate ( 15 N and 18 O), which were used to identify the source nitrate in sampled groundwater, showed that most data indicated a mix of soil nitrogen and nitrogen sources from human or animal waste. Generally, median groundwater discharge to the lake was low across all sites and seasons, with most values smaller than 1 centimeter per day (cm/d). Similar to the nutrient-concentration data, seasonal patterns in seepage flux were weak, and, where there were seasonal increases in flux, the increased groundwater discharge did not carry increased nutrients. Localized estimates of groundwater seepage flux were scaled up to the entire length of the lakeshore. The median groundwater flux of 0.34 cm/d scaled to 1.9 cubic feet per second (ft 3 /s) and the maximum recorded seepage flux of 17.6 cm/d was equivalent to 97 ft 3 /s. These estimates of groundwater inputs are orders of magnitude less than surface water inputs to the lake. Nutrient loads were determined from the product of groundwater flow and a representative nutrient concentration. Using the median seepage flux of 1.9 ft 3 /s, the orthophosphate load ranged from 0.7 to 3.8 pounds of phosphorus per day based on the median and maximum orthophosphate concentrations, respectively. For nitrate plus nitrite, loads ranged from 5.8 to 76.6 pounds of nitrogen per day. Using the maximum value of seepage flux, maximum orthophosphate loads ranged from 35 to 198 pounds of phosphorus per day, and maximum nitrate plus nitrite loads ranged from 296 to 3,943 pound of nitrogen per day. Overall, groundwater nutrient loads are small compared to other sources to the lake. Continued monitoring of future nutrient loads would aid decisions by resource managers as infrastructure within the neighboring residential communities continues to age around Lake Spokane.

Washington↗

USGS2020

Evaluation of the Washington State Department of Transportation stormwater monitoring and effectiveness program for 2014–19

The U.S. Geological Survey was asked by the Washington State Department of Transportation to provide technical assistance as a third-party reviewer of their stormwater effectiveness monitoring program during the transition between the completion of the 2014 Washington State Department of Ecology permit requirements and start of the new 2019 Washington State Department of Ecology permit requirements. For the purposes of this evaluation, the U.S. Geological Survey reviewed Washington State Department of Transportation’s 2014 National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit. This review focuses on sections S7, S8, G9, and appendix 4 of the permit that are specific to monitoring. These sections cover the methods of monitoring, the constituents that were monitored, laboratory requirements, reporting requirements, and data archival. Next, all quality-assurance project plans for the 2014 general permit and annual reports required for the permit were reviewed. The quality-assurance project plans and annual reports were reviewed to ensure that monitoring was executed and reported as required by the 2014 general permit. The monitoring requirements put forth from the permits were fully addressed in quality-assurance project plans and were completed and presented in the annual monitoring reports. Overall, the Washington State Department of Transportation monitoring program does not change much under its new 2019 permit. The Washington State Department of Transportation has followed through with the plan set out in each of its approved quality-assurance project plans and therefore, is in a good position to meet or exceed the new permit requirements in the upcoming 5-year permit cycle.

Open-File Report↗

USGS2016

Continuous-flow centrifugation to collect suspended sediment for chemical analysis

Recent advances in suspended-sediment monitoring tools and surrogate technologies have greatly improved the ability to quantify suspended-sediment concentrations and to estimate daily, seasonal, and annual suspended-sediment fluxes from rivers to coastal waters. However, little is known about the chemical composition of suspended sediment, and how it may vary spatially between water bodies and temporally within a single system owing to climate, seasonality, land use, and other natural and anthropogenic drivers. Many water-quality contaminants, such as organic and inorganic chemicals, nutrients, and pathogens, preferentially partition in sediment rather than water. Suspended sediment-bound chemical concentrations may be undetected during analysis of unfiltered water samples, owing to small water sample volumes and analytical limitations. Quantification of suspended sediment‑bound chemical concentrations is needed to improve estimates of total chemical concentrations, chemical fluxes, and exposure levels of aquatic organisms and humans in receiving environments. Despite these needs, few studies or monitoring programs measure the chemical composition of suspended sediment, largely owing to the difficulty in consistently obtaining samples of sufficient quality and quantity for laboratory analysis. A field protocol is described here utilizing continuous‑flow centrifugation for the collection of suspended sediment for chemical analysis. The centrifuge used for development of this method is small, lightweight, and portable for the field applications described in this protocol. Project scoping considerations, deployment of equipment and system layout options, and results from various field and laboratory quality control experiments are described. The testing confirmed the applicability of the protocol for the determination of many inorganic and organic chemicals sorbed on suspended sediment, including metals, pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and polychlorinated biphenyls. The particle-size distribution of the captured sediment changes to a more fine-grained sample during centrifugation, and the necessity to account for this change when extrapolating chemical concentrations on the centrifuged sediment sample to the environmental water system is discussed. The data produced using this method will help eliminate a data gap of suspended sediment-bound chemical concentrations, and will support management decisions, such as chemical source-control efforts or in-stream restoration activities. When coupled with streamflow and sediment flux data, it will improve estimates of riverine chemical fluxes, and will aid in assessing the importance and impacts of suspended sediment-bound chemicals to downstream freshwater and coastal marine ecosystems.

Techniques and Methods↗

USGS2014

Nitrogen deposition effects on diatom communities in lakes from three National Parks in Washington State

The goal of this study was to document if lakes in National Parks in Washington have exceeded critical levels of nitrogen (N) deposition, as observed in other Western States. We measured atmospheric N deposition, lake water quality, and sediment diatoms at our study lakes. Water chemistry showed that our study lakes were ultra-oligotrophic with ammonia and nitrate concentrations often at or below detection limits with low specific conductance (−1 year −1 and were variable both within and across the parks. Diatom assemblages in a single sediment core from Hoh Lake (Olympic National Park) displayed a shift to increased relative abundances of Asterionella formosa and Fragilaria tenera beginning in the 1969–1975 timeframe, whereas these species were not found at the remaining (nine) sites. These diatom species are known to be indicative of N enrichment and were used to determine an empirical critical load of N deposition, or threshold level, where changes in diatom communities were observed at Hoh Lake. However, N deposition at the remaining nine lakes does not seem to exceed a critical load at this time. At Milk Lake, also in Olympic National Park, there was some evidence that climate change might be altering diatom communities, but more research is needed to confirm this. We used modeled precipitation for Hoh Lake and annual inorganic N concentrations from a nearby National Atmospheric Deposition Program station, to calculate elevation-corrected N deposition for 1980–2009 at Hoh Lake. An exponential fit to this data was hindcasted to the 1969–1975 time period, and we estimate a critical load of 1.0 to 1.2 kg N ha −1 year −1 for wet deposition for this lake.

Washington↗

USGS2014

Quantifying benthic nitrogen fluxes in Puget Sound, Washington: a review of available data

Understanding benthic fluxes is important for understanding the fate of materials that settle to the Puget Sound, Washington, seafloor, as well as the impact these fluxes have on the chemical composition and biogeochemical cycles of marine waters. Existing approaches used to measure benthic nitrogen flux in Puget Sound and elsewhere were reviewed and summarized, and factors for considering each approach were evaluated. Factors for selecting an appropriate approach for gathering information about benthic flux include: availability of resources, objectives of projects, and determination of which processes each approach measures. An extensive search of literature was undertaken to summarize known benthic nitrogen fluxes in Puget Sound. A total of 138 individual flux chamber measurements and 38 sets of diffusive fluxes were compiled for this study. Of the diffusive fluxes, 35 new datasets were located, and new flux calculations are presented in this report. About 65 new diffusive flux calculations are provided across all nitrogen species (nitrate, NO 3 - ; nitrite, NO 2 - ; ammonium, NH 4 + ). Data analysis of this newly compiled benthic flux dataset showed that fluxes beneath deep (greater than 50 meters) water tended to be lower than those beneath shallow (less than 50 meters) water. Additionally, variability in flux at the shallow depths was greater, possibly indicating a more dynamic interaction between the benthic and pelagic environments. The overall range of bottom temperatures from studies in the Puget Sound area were small (5–16 degrees Celsius), and only NH 4 + flux showed any pattern with temperature. For NH 4 + , flux values and variability increased at greater than about 12 degrees Celsius. Collection of additional study site metadata about environmental factors (bottom temperature, depth, sediment porosity, sediment type, and sediment organic matter) will help with development of a broader regional understanding benthic nitrogen flux in the Puget Sound.

Washington↗