Science Inventory

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Nitrate is a drinking water contaminant regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with a maximum contaminant level of 10 mg L−1 as nitrogen. In the U.S. Midwest, nitrate concentration in many drinking water sources exceeds that threshold due to non-po...

EPA’s Freshwater Explorer is an easy-to-use, interactive web-based mapping tool for exploring freshwater data from streams, lakes, and groundwater wells in all 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It includes both observed data points and estimated background...

The biological community of the Laurentian Great Lakes experiences a complex set of stressors, from physical (e.g., altered thermal-oxygen profiles and flash erosion events), biological (e.g. invasive species and harmful algal blooms) and chemical (e.g., legacy and emerging conta...

Excess riverine phosphorus represents a preeminent catalyst for water quality degradation. Spatial mapping and characterization of the net gain and loss of riverine phosphorus help discern the critical source areas. Here, we developed a dataset encompassing phosphate (PO) and tot...

Atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition leads to many changes in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, affecting ecosystem processes and species composition. Terrestrial vegetation often shifts from being N-limited to light-limited and becomes dominated by a few fast-growing strong com...

Nutrient pollution remains a major driver of water quality impairment globally, yet national-scale understanding of why nitrogen and phosphorus loads increase or decrease remains limited. Here we integrate three federal datasets—(1) flow-normalized riverine load trends of t...

This report assesses the risks from N and S deposition on 198 herbaceous plant species of the continental United States. Information for each species has been compiled from several peer-reviewed Federal and non-Federal sources. Seventy-one species are featured in detail. For each...

Human-driven environmental change has caused harmful algal blooms (HABs) to increase in aquatic ecosystems worldwide, yet our understanding of their impacts on food webs and the fisheries that they support remains incomplete. This information gap is especially conspicuous in Lake...

Wildland fire smoke can severely degrade downwind air quality and impact responding firefighters and the public. Accurate and timely monitoring of particulate matter (PM) and gaseous pollutants around wildland fires are needed to support management activities like protecting resp...

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) pose significant environmental and health risks, necessitating innovative removal strategies. This study investigates ovalbumin, a globular protein, as a potential bio-adsorbent candidate for PFAS removal from water. Specifically, we emp...

The Interagency Working Group on Ocean Acidification monitoring Prioritization Plan 2024 calls for Coastal Acidification Networks to identify the ocean and coastal acidification (OCA) monitoring needs most important for their regions. The Northeast Coastal Acidification Network (...

This is a downloadable (zip file) interactive user interface (UI), which we developed using R code (R Shiny), to quantify the relationships between water quality and landscape variables.  For this UI we utilized total phosphorus (TP) concentrations measurements from lakes in 17 n...

Interest in using DNA metabarcoding as part of monitoring and assessment programs continues to increase since 2020 when EPA first published a study on its use to quantify diatom responses to nutrients in streams at a watershed scale. Results from this initial work were subsequent...

This is a presentation to be given for the HABs, Hypoxia, and Nutrients Research Webinar. The presentation shows that wildfire smoke contains high amounts of nutrients compared to non-smoke days. The elevated phosphorus is particularly notable relative to non-smoke measurements. ...

Low-gradient coastal stream systems support important landscape level ecological functions by connecting uplands and marshes directly to large tidal rivers, estuaries, and coastal waterbodies. In this study, we develop and evaluate innovative monitoring and assessment methods to ...

The Puente Jobos community in southern Puerto Rico has multiple sources of inhalable particulate matter less than 10 μm in diameter (PM10), including a nearby coal-fired power plant, a well-traveled road in the center of town, sea spray, and long-range transport of Saharan dus...

HABS-BLOCKS© infused with glucose have been shown to reduce cyanobacterial populations and microcystin (MC) concentrations in laboratory mesocosm studies. An in situ limno-corral (LC) mesocosm study of HABS-BLOCKS© was conducted for two weeks during the 2025 algal bloom...

In Lake Erie, harmful algal blooms have become a recurrent problem during the summer-through-fall growing season. We investigated if the annual disturbance of harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie relates to distinct differences in carbon and nitrogen stable isotope composition (&del...

We investigated the potential of nature-based solutions within the context of agriculture conservation practices (ACPs) that impact watershed hydrology and water quality in Shell Creek, Nebraska, USA. This region serves as an example of a successful watershed conversion driven by...

This study investigates the concept of using engineered biochar to reclaim phosphorus (P) in water and subsequent reuse of recovered P-laden engineered biochar for remediation of lead (Pb) contaminated soil. Hickory wood biochar (BC) was loaded with Mg oxides/hydroxides (EBC) via...

Nitrogen (N) fertilizers are critical to modern society and human well-being. However, these benefits have tradeoffs, as N fertilizer in excess of plant demand can lead to environmental impacts. New fertilizer technologies reduce losses to the environment, but many studies evalua...

EPA’s Freshwater Explorer is an easy-to-use, interactive web-based mapping tool for exploring freshwater data from streams, lakes, and groundwater wells in all 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It includes both observed data points and estimated back...

NOx emissions produced by lightning strikes (LNOx) play an increasingly important role in atmospheric chemistry due to their abundance and prevalence in the mid-to-upper troposphere, especially in regions with decreasing trends in anthropogenic NOx emissions. Accurately quantifyi...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Nutrient Inventory provides estimates of major agricultural, urban, atmospheric, and natural nutrient fluxes for the contiguous United States at county and HUC12 scales annually from 1987 (from 1950 for agriculture) to 201...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Nutrient Inventory provides estimates of major agricultural, urban, atmospheric, and natural nutrient fluxes for the contiguous United States at county and HUC12 scales annually from 1987 (from 1950 for agriculture) to 201...