Assessing the Impact of Drought on Arsenic Exposure from Private Domestic Wells in the Conterminous United States.

This study assesses the potential impact of drought on arsenic exposure from private domestic wells by using a previously developed statistical model that predicts the probability of elevated arsenic concentrations (>10 μg per liter) in water from domestic wells located in the conterminous United States (CONUS). The application of the model to simulate drought conditions used systematically reduced precipitation and recharge values. The drought conditions resulted in higher probabilities of elevated arsenic throughout most of the CONUS.

Disentangling the potential effects of land-use and climate change on stream conditions.

Land-use and climate change are significantly affecting stream ecosystems, yet understanding of their long-term impacts is hindered by the few studies that have simultaneously investigated their interaction and high variability among future projections. We modeled possible effects of a suite of 2030, 2060, and 2090 land-use and climate scenarios on the condition of 70,772 small streams in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, United States. The Chesapeake Basin-wide Index of Biotic Integrity, a benthic macroinvertebrate multimetric index, was used to represent stream condition.

Projected warming disrupts the synchrony of riparian seed release and snowmelt streamflow.

Globally, spring phenology and abiotic processes are shifting earlier with warming. Differences in the magnitudes of these shifts may decouple the timing of plant resource requirements from resource availability. In riparian forests across the northern hemisphere, warming could decouple seed release from snowmelt peak streamflow, thus reducing moisture and safe sites for dominant tree recruitment.