Nutrients

The USGS has the principal responsibility within the federal government to provide the hydrologic information and understanding needed by others to achieve the best use and management of the nation’s water resources. Basic data are the key to solving many water-quantity or -quality problems. Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana operate a large hydrologic network across the three states, collecting surface...

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...

Adult bighead, silver, and hybrid carp are invavsive species of fish that spread quickly once they are established in a water body. These carp damage habitat and reduce water-quality for native fish. Invasive carp have been confirmed within the Wabash River basin for at least 15 years. Scientists and natural resource managers are extremely concerned about the carp migrating to the Great Lakes...

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...

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 City of Columbus operates 5 high-capacity collector wells to extract groundwater for drinking-water supply. To assist the City, the USGS monitors water levels in 5 observation wells and operates a water-quality monitor on the Scioto River where specific conductance, temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, and turbidity are measured on an hourly basis. In addition, groundwater-level synoptic...

Scientists will be collecting field water-quality parameters and samples for laboratory analysis of nutrients, silica, and suspended sediment at the USGS Ohio River at Ironton, OH gaging station and the Green River at Spottsville, KY gaging station on a monthly basis. Stable isotope water samples also will be collected at the Green River site. The Ohio River at Ironton, OH site will serve, along...

What is the groundwater contribution to nitrates in surface water? That's the question we are trying to answer by looking at surface-water and groundwater interaction and the role each play in the movement of nitrates. We have added additional monitoring equipment to the USGS super gage Kankakee River at Davis, IN, which will allow us to calculate the nitrate load in groundwater using flow...

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.

Water Science Center scientists monitor several rivers in Kentucky as part of the USGS National Water-Quality Program (NWQP). As part of the NWQP program , USGS scientists from across the country are determine the status and trends of loads and concentrations of contaminants, nutrients, and sediment in the Nation’s large rivers.