Kings River Quality Assurance Project Final Report

The Kings River Watershed Partnership non-profit citizens group formed to take local control over water quality issues in the Kings River watershed in Arkansas. One of the first items the group addressed was water quality monitoring of the Kings River and Osage Creek. To this end they formed a water quality monitoring committee that was charged with the development of a water quality monitoring plan. The objectives of the plan they developed are: 1) to characterize both spatial and temporal variability in water quality parameters throughout the watershed during each year, 2) to utilize volunteers to monitor the water quality, and 3) to institute QA/QC procedures that will insure the quality of the data collected and allow its use in development of a Watershed Management plan

On the recovery of Local Group motion from galaxy redshift surveys

There is a $\sim 150 km s^{-1}$ discrepancy between the measured motion of the Local Group of galaxies (LG) with respect to the CMB and the linear theory prediction based on the gravitational force field of the large scale structure in full-sky redshift surveys. We perform a variety of tests which show that the LG motion cannot be recovered to better than $150-200 km s^{-1}$ in amplitude and within a $\approx10^\circ$ in direction. The tests rely on catalogs of mock galaxies identified in the Millennium simulation using semi-analytic galaxy formation models. We compare these results to the $K_s=11.75$ Two-Mass Galaxy Redshift Survey, which provides the deepest, widest and most complete spatial distribution of galaxies available so far. In our analysis we use a new, concise relation for deriving the LG motion and bulk flow from the true distribution of galaxies in redshift space. Our results show that the main source of uncertainty is the small effective depth of surveys like the 2MRS that prevents a proper sampling of the large scale structure beyond $\sim100 h^{-1} Mpc$. Deeper redshift surveys are needed to reach the "convergence scale" of $\approx 250 h^{-1}Mpc$ in a $\Lambda$CDM universe. Deeper survey would also mitigate the impact of the "Kaiser rocket" which, in a survey like 2MRS, remains a significant source of uncertainty. Thanks to the quiet and moderate density environment of the LG, purely dynamical uncertainties of the linear predictions are subdominant at the level of $\sim 90 km s^{-1}$. Finally, we show that deviations from linear galaxy biasing and shot noise errors provide a minor contribution to the total error budget.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

Updating the (Supermassive Black Hole Mass) - (Spiral Arm Pitch Angle) Relation: A Strong Correlation for Galaxies with Pseudobulges

We have conducted an image analysis of the (current) full sample of 44 spiral galaxies with directly measured supermassive black hole (SMBH) masses, $M_{\rm BH}$, to determine each galaxy's logarithmic spiral arm pitch angle, $\phi$. For predicting black hole masses, we have derived the relation: $\log({M_{\rm BH}/{\rm M_{\odot}}}) = (7.01\pm0.07) - (0.171\pm0.017)[|\phi|-15\deg]$. The total root mean square scatter associated with this relation is 0.43 dex in the $\log{M_{\rm BH}}$ direction, with an intrinsic scatter of $0.33\pm0.08$ dex. The $M_{\rm BH}$-$\phi$ relation is therefore at least as accurate at predicting SMBH masses in spiral galaxies as the other known relations. By definition, the existence of an $M_{\rm BH}$-$\phi$ relation demands that the SMBH mass must correlate with the galaxy discs in some manner. Moreover, with the majority of our sample (37 of 44) classified in the literature as having a pseudobulge morphology, we additionally reveal that the SMBH mass correlates with the large-scale spiral pattern and thus the discs of galaxies hosting pseudobulges. Furthermore, given that the $M_{\rm BH}$-$\phi$ relation is capable of estimating black hole masses in bulge-less spiral galaxies, it therefore has great promise for predicting which galaxies may harbour intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs, $M_{\rm BH}<10^5$ ${\rm M_{\odot}}$). Extrapolating from the current relation, we predict that galaxies with $|\phi| \geq 26.7\deg$ should possess IMBHs.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, and 4 tables. Accepted July 13. Received 2017 July 13; in original form 2017 May 2