Ecological Flows

In cooperation with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

"Super" gages provide real-time, continuous water-quality information for rivers and streams at selected Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) streamgages. By combining discrete and continuous data in statistical models, USGS scientists can continuously estimate constituents that are difficult to measure in real-time. For example, in-stream turbidity sensors are often used to...

Sanitation District #1, located in Northern Kentucky, in cooperation with the USGS, established a stream gaging network to adhere to requirements of a Consent Decree. This legally-binding document between Sanitation District #1 and state and federal environmental regulators helps to increase responsible watershed management.

What is a Super Gage? A gage at which continuous flow and water level are determined, along with continuous traditional water-quality (water temperature, specific conductance, pH, dissolved oxygen, and/or turbidity) and either of the following criteria: at least one other less-traditional continuous water-quality parameter (orthophosphate, nitrate concentration) and/or where surrogates (developed...

In September 2015, Kentucky Water Science Center scientists, in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), began investigations on two Kentucky lakes and tailwaters. Continuous water quality is collected at both lake and tailwater sites and gage height is monitored at the tailwater sites.

Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana Water Science Center is monitoring the effects of best management practices (BMP's) on baseflow and storm runoff in the Black Creek watershed near Harlan, IN. We will be sampling water-quality intensively for 5 years from overland field, subsurface tile, and in-stream runoff events. Results will be used to model the effectiveness of BMP’s in reducing nutrient and...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservations Service and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have focused part of the National Water Quality Initiative (NWQI) on the School Branch watershed. The USGS is collaborating, through a Clean Water Act Section 319 grant, with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to accomplish NWQI nonpoint-source water-pollution...

Scientists research biology, botany, microbiology, habitat, climate, water quality, and other fields to achieve a comprehensive view of ecosystems and their health. Ecosystems can be easily stressed by human activities, climate change, sediment, nutrients, contaminants, and many other variables. Ecosystem monitoring is critical to ecosystem health and answers important questions about the...

Eutrophication, or excess nutrients in streams, is typically one of the top reasons that a stream is listed as impaired on the 303(d) list as part of the Clean Water Act.

Eutrophication, or excess nutrients in streams, is typically one of the top reasons that a stream is listed as impaired on the 303(d) list as part of the Clean Water Act. How nutrients, primarily nitrogen and phosphorus, are transported to streams and groundwater greatly affects the best management plan to keep them on fields and out of streams and groundwater. Likewise, environmental managers and...

The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) is an interagency effort that seeks to accelerate ecosystem restoration in the Great Lakes by confronting threats to the region, such as nonpoint source pollution. Three Priority Watersheds have been targeted (Fox/Green Bay, Saginaw, and Maumee) and are characterized by having a high density of agricultural land use and have ecosystem impairments...

The long-term goals of the National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) and National Stream Quality Accounting Network (NASQAN) programs are to describe the status and trends in the quality of a large representative part of the Nation's surface-water and groundwater resources and to provide a sound, scientific understanding of the primary factors affecting the quality of these resources. USGS Water...