Office of Research and Development Publications

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Depressional wetlands of the extensive U.S. and Canadian Prairie Pothole Region afford numerous ecosystem processes that maintain healthy watershed functioning. However, these wetlands have been lost at a prodigious rate over past decades due to drainage for development, climate ...

High‐resolution mass spectrometry is advantageous for monitoring physiological impacts and contaminant biotransformation products in fish exposed to complex wastewater effluent. We evaluated this technique using skin mucus from male and female fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas...

Purpose: Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results are used to assess potential environmental impacts of different products and services. The usefulness of LCIA results is dependent on the comparability and environmental relevance of the impact indicators used. As part of th...

Rivers in the arid Western United States face increasing influences from anthropogenic contaminants due to population growth, urbanization, and drought. To better understand and more effectively track the impacts of these contaminants, biologically-based monitoring tools are incr...

Pesticide use in agricultural areas requires the application of numerous chemicals to control target organisms, leaving non-target organisms at risk. The present study evaluates the hepatic metabolomic profile of one group of non-target organisms, amphibians, after exposure to a ...

Recent assessments have found that a warming climate, with associated increases in extreme heat events, could profoundly affect human health. This paper describes a new modeling and analysis framework, built around the Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program&mdash;Community Edition...

The effectiveness of management actions in reducing the release of excess nitrogen (N) to the environment is best assessed if N fluxes across air, land and water are regularly quantified at relevant scales. However, the most recent US-scale N inventory was conducted for the early...

Water resource managers are faced with the challenge of managing multiple, interacting, near and long-term threats, with limited resources. For example, aquatic biota and watersheds are exposed to more frequent extreme weather events, warming temperatures, and changing hydrologic...

The Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) framework describes the progression of a toxicity pathway from molecular perturbation to population-level outcome in a series of measurable, mechanistic responses. The controlled, computer-readable vocabulary that defines an AOP has the ability t...

Synthesis of existing research on nutrient (i.e., nitrogen and phosphorus) stressor-response relationships can provide scientific evidence for environmental decision makers charged with protecting and managing ecosystem integrity through the tools provided by the Clean Water Act,...

Effective monitoring and prediction of flood and drought events requires an improved understanding of how and why surface water expansion and contraction in response to climate varies across space. This paper sought to (1) quantify how interannual patterns of surface water expans...

Assessing the risk of bias (RoB) of individual studies is a critical part in determining the certainty of a body of evidence from non-randomized studies (NRS) that evaluate potential health effects due to environmental exposures. The recently released RoB in NRS of Interventions ...

Tracer breakthrough curves provide valuable information about the traced media, especially in inherently heterogeneous karst aquifers. In order to study the effect of variations in hydraulic gradient and conduit systems on breakthrough curves, a bench scale karst model was constr...

Excess nitrate in drinking water is a human health concern, especially for young children. When a public drinking water system exceeds the 10 mg nitrate-N L-1 maximum contaminant level (MCL), that system is reported as having a violation in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agenc...

Several national diatom datasets from EPA and USGS will be synthesized to develop multi-metric indices of biological condition along urban and agricultural gradients. Diatom traits tables will be used to develop the multi-metric indices, including traits such as saprobity, pollut...

Background/Objective: Few studies have assessed the effect of ambient heat during the fetal development period on congenital heart defects (CHDs), especially in transitional seasons. We examined and compared the associations between extreme heat and CHD phenotypes in summer and s...

Agricultural best management practices (BMPs) reduce non-point source pollution from cropland. Goals for BMP adoption and expected pollutant load reductions are often specified in water quality management plans to protect and restore waterbodies; however, estimates of needed load...

Advances in satellite retrieval of aerosol type can improve the accuracy of near-surface air quality characterization by providing broad regional context and decreasing metric uncertainties and errors. The frequent, spatially extensive and radiometrically consistent instantaneous...

It has been proposed that the summer “southern-flood-north-drought” (SFND) pattern over the recent decades observed in China is caused by the relative impacts of global warming, aerosol loading and natural variability on regional rainfall (1, 2, 3). This conclusion is supported ...

This presentation will discuss an introduction to dose-response to include the four steps within the risk assessment process.

Most of this presentation lecture will focus on the qualitative aspects of biology and gas properties that determine uptake in the respiratory tract.

This presentation is intended to introduce a diverse audience to the complexity of the historical testing paradigm for developmental and reproductive toxicity testing and risk evaluation. Alternative methodological testing frameworks will need to be flexible and integrated in ord...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires development of a Quality Assurance (QA) Project Plan (QAPP) to document the type and quality of data and model information used for making environmental decisions. This applies to PBPK models, which are mathematical descript...

NCEA uses modular systematic review methods and interoperable tools to add transparency and reproducibility to assessment development. The modular nature allows for assessment-specific flexibility (e.g., depending on stakeholder needs) and efficiency across multi-person teams. Th...

This presentation provides an overview of (1) risk assessment at the EPA; (2) systematic review in the IRIS program; (3) the animal study evaluation protocol used by the IRIS program, and (4) how students can apply the study evaluation considerations when they are writing and des...