NAWQA

About 1 billion pounds of conventional pesticides are used each year in the United States to control weeds, insects, and other pests. The use of pesticides has resulted in a range of benefits, including increased food production and reduction of insect-borne disease, but also raises questions about possible adverse effects on the environment, including water quality. The National Water Quality...

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 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...

The Lake Erie and Lake Saint Clair (LERI) Basins in Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania comprise one of more than 50 study units that are part of the USGS National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program. The long-term goals of the NAWQA program are to describe the water-quality status and trends in a large representative part of the Nation's surface-water and groundwater...

Staff have been sampling Sugar Creek at New Palestine and the White River at Hazleton heavily since the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA) pilot study in 1991. We have collected 26 years of nutrient, pesticide, major ions, and sediment data at these sites. Our intensive data collection is critical to the science and results published by the NAWQA program.