USGS Science⌕ Search
Home/Archive/USGS

USGS · 70271392

Understanding economic and environmental tradeoffs of bottled water facilities using Structural Topic Modeling and Lexicon-based categorization of public news media

Alisha Yee Chan·Catherine Christenson
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Bottled water facilities exist across the United States (U.S.) in all 50 states and have the potential to affect localities in which they are located. This study aims to understand how water bottling facilities are portrayed in news media in the U.S., focusing on economic and environmental tradeoffs, by using Natural Language Processing techniques, specifically Structural Topic Modeling and Lexicon-based Categorization, across different U.S. states and time periods. Through our stratified analysis, we identified key environmental topics and natural resources, as well as companies attracting media attention in different regions and time periods. Results suggest that: (1) the increase in news media publications were correlated with current events such as drought or the start or change in operations of bottling facilities, and (2) these current events also influenced whether the coverage focused on economic topics or environmental concerns. The balance of water availability and economic development is a theme prevalent among the results of both forms of analysis. This study demonstrates the importance of understanding the unique values of a locality before making decisions that may affect residents.

Explore related subjects

Environmental Research CommunicationsArticle

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Alisha Yee Chan, Catherine Christenson. 2025-08-08. Understanding economic and environmental tradeoffs of bottled water facilities using Structural Topic Modeling and Lexicon-based categorization of public news media. https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620%2Fadf1e1

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related USGS reports

USGS2026

Reassessing water availability in the Nile River Basin using satellite-based irrigation water use accounting

Existing estimates of irrigation areas and water use in the Nile River Basin vary widely and are based on inconsistent data and methodologies. This study leverages advances in remote sensing to provide an up-to-date and consistent basin-wide reassessment of water use in the Nile River Basin. Land cover and actual evapotranspiration data from 2013 to 2022 were used to quantify irrigated areas, irrigation water use, and the average naturalized water yield. Across the basin, 7.1 million hectares of irrigated land consume an average of 72.5 ± 2.6 billion cubic meters (BCM) of blue water annually. Egypt and Sudan together account for 92% of the irrigated area and 97% of the irrigation water use. The basin’s average naturalized yield, evaluated at Dongola station, is determined to be between 108 and 114.4 ± 3.2 BCM. Although conservative, this updated analysis indicates the basin’s average naturalized yield is 14%–20% higher than the previous naturalized yield estimate (95 BCM) and 29%–36% higher than the commonly cited observed flow of 84 BCM, which is frequently treated as the total basin-wide available water. Importantly, the study underscores that the 84 BCM represents flow at the Aswan gauging station after upstream consumptive uses, not the total water available in the basin under naturalized conditions. This distinction is critical for accurate water accounting, planning, and governance in this water-scarce basin. This study demonstrates the value of open-source remote sensing resources in data-scarce regions while emphasizing the need for region specific validation and bias correction for improved accuracy.

Nile River Basin↗
USGS2026

The effect of solar energy development on plant diversity across spatial scales

Utility-scale solar energy development is a novel and rapidly expanding land-use with largely unknown consequences for plant diversity. Construction disturbance and associated increases in environmental heterogeneity in solar facilities relative to undisturbed ecosystems can affect plant diversity at multiple spatial scales. We assessed the effects of modified construction methods, designed to reduce impacts of a utility-scale solar facility, on plant diversity across spatial scales (1–4000 m 2 ) in the Mojave Desert, USA one year after construction. Vegetation surveys across three soil–vegetation types revealed that species richness and evenness were largely unaffected by solar infrastructure at local scales in two of the three soil–vegetation types, but in creosote bush ( Larrea tridentata )-white bursage ( Ambrosia dumosa ) communities with deep soils, both metrics increased. Beta diversity remained unchanged by solar infrastructure while gamma diversity (4000 m 2 ) increased or had a small reduction depending on the soil–vegetation type. These results suggest that low-impact construction can have neutral to positive effects on plant diversity.

Nevada↗
USGS2025

Invasion of perennial sagebrush steppe by shallow-rooted exotic cheatgrass reduces stable forms of soil carbon in a warmer but not cooler ecoregion

Soil organic carbon ('SOC') in drylands comprises nearly a third of the global SOC pool and has relatively rapid turnover and thus is a key driver of variability in the global carbon cycle. SOC is also a sensitive indicator of longer-term directional change and disturbance-responses of ecosystem C storage. Biome-scale disruption of the dryland carbon cycle by exotic annual grass invasions (mainly Bromus tectorum, 'Cheatgrass') threatens carbon storage and corresponding benefits to soil hydrology and nutrient retention. Past studies on cheatgrass impacts mainly focused on total C, and of the few that evaluated SOC, none compared the very different fractions of SOC, such as relatively unstable particulate organic carbon (POC) or relatively stable, mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC). We measured SOC and its POC and MAOC constituents in the surface soils of sites that had sagebrush canopies but differed in whether their understories had been invaded by cheatgrass or not, in both warm and relatively colder ecoregions of the western USA. MAOC stocks were 36.1% less in the 0–10 cm depth and 46.1% less in the 10–20 cm depth in the cheatgrass-invaded stands compared to the uninvaded stands of the warmer Colorado Plateau, but not in the cooler and more carbon-rich Wyoming Basin ecoregion. In plots where cheatgrass increased SOC, it was via unstable POC. These findings indicate that cheatgrass effects on the distribution of soil carbon among POC and MAOC fractions may vary among ecoregions, and that cheatgrass can reduce forms of carbon that are otherwise considered stable and 'secure', i.e. sequestered.

Environmental Research Communications↗