NOAA's Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) lists saltmarshes along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts as the most vulnerable habitat to oil spills. As a result of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig accident, more that 200 million gallons of crude oil ...

The Great Lakes, the largest surface freshwater resource in the world, has long been recognized for its valuable natural resources and services vital to the wellbeing of our nation. In 2012 a probabilistic sampling component was included under an expanded ...

Sample collection in the field faces many challenges including, but not limited to, the equipment and materials that can be brought safely into the field. Field teams will often reuse sample collection gear by cleaning it between sampling sites to ...

Efforts to assess the ecological impacts of the marked increase in coastal hypoxia worldwide have been hampered by a lack of biomarkers of hypoxia exposure in marine benthic organisms. Here, we show that hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) transcript levels in the ...

The defensibility of field sampling data collected in support of natural resource damage assessments and other environmental investigations depends on rigorous quality assurance and control both in the field and laboratory. One important step in field procedures is the cleaning ...

The primary purpose of this document is to provide local and federal partners with baseline information and survey methods to allow for continued monitoring efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of management actions taken at the Samoa Maritime quarry in Faga'alu, ...

A baseline environmental characterization of the northeastern reaches of Bristol Bay, Alaska was conducted using the National Status and Trends’ sediment quality triad approach. The study area was subdivided into 6 strata based on geophysical and hydrodynamic patterns (the upper ...

Large-scale hypoxia regularly develops during the summer on the Louisiana continental shelf. Traditionally, hypoxia has been linked to the vast winter and spring nutrient inputs from the Mississippi River and its distributary, the Atchafalaya River. However, recent studies indicate that ...

In this article, we quantify some important changes in water quality for the Lower Mississippi River for this century and then suggest their causes and possible impact ...

A baseline environmental characterization of the embayments and fjords on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska was conducted using a sediment quality approach based on sediment chemistry, and benthic invertebrate community structure. Sediment toxicity and resident fish body burdens were also assessed ...