Advanced Monitoring

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) South Atlantic Water Science Center (SAWSC) geographic area has two Urban Waters Federal Partnership (UWFP) watersheds: Proctor Creek in Atlanta, GA, and Walnut Creek in Raleigh, NC. The local efforts in Walnut Creek are supported by many partner organizations, including but not limited to: Partners for Environmental Justice, the Carolina Wetlands Association, the...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), has evaluated clear-water and live-bed pier, contraction, and abutment scour associated with over 200 bridges throughout South Carolina for many years, predominantly at non-tidally influenced sites. These evaluations resulted in the development of...

The South Atlantic Water Science Center (SAWSC) geographic area has two Urban Waters Federal Partnership (UWFP) watersheds: Proctor Creek in Atlanta, GA (Figure 1) and the newly established partnership for Walnut Creek in Raleigh, NC. SAWSC is working on two UWFP projects in the Proctor Creek Watershed focused on fecal-associated pathogens (Figure 2) and microplastics (Figure 3). This work in...

Background: How safe is it to swim, wade, and boat in the Chattahoochee River today? For a highly urbanized river such as the Chattahoochee, much of the answer depends on bacteria levels in the water. This website provides "real time" turbidity data, the estimated Escherichia coli (E coli) bacteria count, the most recent E. coli bacteria counts (sample collected each Thursday), and National Park...

In the mid-1990s, a new technology emerged in the field of inland streamflow monitoring. The South Atlantic Water Science Center is making great use of the acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP). It was originally developed for oceanographic work, but was adapted for inland streamflow measurements. This instrument is transforming the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) streamgaging program.

Preventing flood hazards, such as the hurricane induced storm surge, from becoming human disasters requires an understanding of the relative risks floods pose to specific communities and knowledge of the processes by which flood waters rise, converge, and abate. Historically, hurricane-induced storm tides have been documented through measurement of high-water marks left on structures or vegetation...

As one of several national “Focus Area Studies” in the Department of Interior’s WaterSMART initiative, USGS South Atlantic Water Science Center is undertaking a 3-year study of water availability and use to meet competing societal and ecological needs in Southeastern Atlantic Coastal Basins of the Carolinas. The Coastal Carolinas study area includes lower parts of the Pee Dee/Waccamaw River and...

USGS WaterAlert allows users to set notification thresholds for any USGS real-time stream or raingage, water-quality, or groundwater monitoring site and then sends emails or text messages to subscribers whenever the threshold conditions are met, as often as every hour.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has created flood-inundation maps for selected streamgage sites in North Carolina. These maps depict the approximate area that would be inundated at selected water levels, ranging from approximately top-of-bank to the maximum observed water level. The inundated areas depicted on these maps are approximate, and accuracy of the maps is a function of the accuracy of...

The contaminants of emerging concern (CEC) umbrella covers several broad classes of contaminants that include: pharmaceuticals and personal care products, organic wastewater compounds, antimicrobials, antibiotics, animal and human hormones, as well as domestic and industrial detergents. The potential impacts of CECs on the environment, in general, and on natural surface-water and riparian...

The primary objective of this project is to develop an integrated procedure for assessing scour potential at riverine bridges in South Carolina utilizing the regional bridge-scour envelope curves developed in the three previous field investigations.