Surface Water

The objective of this project is to update the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s (UMUT) existing Groundwater Protection Plan to protect their valuable groundwater resources in Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico.

To better characterize the water supply capacity of Clear Creek Reservoir, Chaffee County, Colorado, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Pueblo Board of Water Works and Colorado Mountain College, carried out a bathymetry survey of Clear Creek Reservoir. The equipment and methods used in this study allowed water-resource managers to maintain typical reservoir operations, eliminating...

Monument and Fountain Creeks and their respective watersheds, located in the Front Range of Colorado, serve as important drainages for surface runoff, waste-water treatment operations, and as a water supply for downstream agricultural needs. As population growth continues in these watersheds, more and more pressures are being applied to the receiving streams, especially Fountain Creek.

StreamStats is a map based Web application that provides information that can be used by engineers, managers, and planners to make informed decisions on water-related activities. The map-based user interface can be used to delineate drainage areas, get basin characteristics and estimates of flow statistics. StreamStats allows for the analysis of upstream and downstream relations along streams. In...

Within the Southern Rockies Landscape Conservation Cooperative (SRLCC), streamflow information is needed for a wide variety of hydrologic conditions to understand streamflow in the context of ecological services, water availability and use, or water quality.

Rainfall amounts associated with the September 2013 Colorado Floods exceeded 15 inches in some locations and resulted in significant flooding along the Front Range (Hydrometeorological Design Studies Center, 2013). These events resulted in streamflows that compromised a variety of transportation structures such as bridges and culverts and roadways. By coupling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric...

In response to the need for more information about selenium (Se) sources and transport, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Colorado Water Conservation Board, completed a study that characterized Se loads in a reach of the Gunnison River between Delta and Grand Junction, Colo. This study identifies where possible dissolved Se loading is occurring in a study reach in the Lower...

Decline of amphibian populations worldwide has prompted an international effort to determine causes of decline in various locations and ecosytems. Some causes which have been suggested include habitat alteration, introduced species, disease, and environmental stressors such as ultraviolet radiation, agricultural chemicals in groundwater, and contaminants in atmospheric deposition. The Amphibian...

The U.S. Geological Survey StreamStats program can be used to estimate the magnitude of various annual exceedance probability floods such as the 50-year or 100-year floods at locations where no streamgage data are available. In eastern Colorado where few streamgages exist, the regional-flood equations used in StreamStats have large uncertainties. In order to reduce these uncertainties, the U.S...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Colorado Water Conservation Board, evaluated the predictive uncertainty of mean-monthly streamflow-regression equations representative of natural streamflow conditions in Colorado. This study evaluates the predictive uncertainty of mean-monthly streamflow-regression equations developed in a 2009 U.S. Geological Survey study using streamflow data...

The Waldo Canyon wildfire burned more than 18,000 acres within a perimeter of more than 19,000 acres. In response to the July and August 2013 floods in the Waldo Canyon watershed and in collaboration with the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and the U.S. Geological Survey developed a warning system for Waldo Canyon associated with a wildfire burn scar, which are at risk to debris and...

Satellite altimetry associated with the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission offers a solution for measuring (1) river stage and slope, (2) water surface area including mean channel width and (3) derivatives such as river discharge. The measurements can be used to track changes in these variables and provide an accounting of the Earth's fresh-water bodies from space at the reach scale...