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Yankton Field Research Station
U.S. Geological Survey
31247 436th Avenue
Yankton, South Dakota 57078-9214
The Yankton Field Research Station (photo) is located in Yankton, South Dakota. The Station is adjacent to the fish and Wildlife Service's Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery and Aquarium, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer's Gavins Point Dam, which holds Lewis and Clark Lake, the most downstream mainstem reservoir on the Missouri River.
The facility (aerial photo) is located on a 5-acre site (formerly occupied by the North-Central Reservoir Investigation Team of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), located 3 miles west of Yankton, South Dakota, and a quarter mile south of the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery (NFH) and Aquarium.
The heart of the Station is a modern 6,400 square foot main building consisting of five offices, a staff room, a four-room chemistry area (photo) (including an analytical room (photo) equipped with an atomic absorption spectrophotometer), and a 4,600 square foot wet laboratory area for toxicity testing. Two peripheral buildings provide an additional 2,100 square feet of space devoted to maintenance and storage facilities. Two 65-foot deep wells provide an uncontaminated source of hard water suitable for maintaining cold- and warm-water fishes and aquatic invertebrates (photo). Wastewater from toxicity studies is discharged to a zero-discharge, evaporative lagoon. Research equipment includes large temperature-controlled water baths (photo) used in acute; and chronic toxicity testing, and flowing water test systems that are controlled to simulate natural environmental conditions including daylight photoperiod. These systems are used to study the long-term effects of contaminants on survival, growth, and behavior (photo) of various life
stages of test animals under realistic environmental pollution conditions.
The Station has the unique capacity in its experimental water treatment facilities to create large quantities of waters characteristic of a wide range of environmental conditions including the soft waters in acid-sensitive lakes of the northeastern U.S. as well as saline ocean water. Thus, the Station has the capabilities to conduct special studies of national concern with test species native to areas outside the Midwest Region.
The Station has a mobile laboratory (8' x 24') for on-site toxicity studies. Specialized equipment allows the use of the mobile unit at remote sites with appropriate fish and invertebrate species. A wide variety of water quality characteristics can be measured in-situ and on samples returned to the mobile lab. Samples of water, sediment, food organisms, and test animals can be field collected and appropriately preserved and stored for later analytical analyses. The mobile unit has been at Ouray NWR, UT, to conduct a 30-day test with larval razorback sucker exposed to natural selenium in zooplankton, in a 3-year study in Grand Junction, CO, to assess the effects on larval razorback sucker exposed to combines of clean and site waters and clean and selenium-laden site zooplankton, and a 7-day study in Rapid City, SD, to assess the effects on young fathead minnow exposed to seep waters collected along Whitewood Creek in the Black Hills.
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