Publications

Available data on pesticides in streams, streambed sediment, and ground water from Federal, state, and local agencies are reviewed for part of the Upper Mississippi River Basin study unit of the National Water-Quality Assessment Program. The analysis focuses on a smaller study area encompassing 19,500 square miles that includes the Upper Mississippi River Basin from Lake Pepin upstream...

Herbicides, particularly those applied to corn, can be found in surface water and ground water in Wisconsin (Sullivan and Richards, 1996; Matzen and Saad, 1996). Wisconsin farmers applied 7.6 million pounds of corn herbicides during 1996. Because of public concern about the amount of herbicides applied to Wisconsin farm fields and the impact on surrounding watersheds, a study was...

Excessive inflow of sediment and nutrients has contributed to eutrophication of Delavan Lake in southeastern Wisconsin. A wetland restoration project at the mouth of the lake's principal inflowing stream system was implemented in 1992, primarily for the purpose of reducing sediment and nutrient loading to the lake. This function of the wetland system, which includes three retention ponds...

In 1992, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey, began a land-use inventory to identify sources of contaminants and track the land-management changes for eight evaluation monitoring watersheds in Wisconsin. An important component of the land-use inventory has been developing descriptions and preliminary assessments for the eight...

Water resources data for the 1996 water year for Michigan consists of records of stage, discharge, and water quality of streams; stage and contents of lakes and reservoirs; and ground water levels. This report contains discharge records for 144 streamflow-gaging stations; stage only records for 1 stream-gaging stations and 19 lake-gaging stations; stage and contents for 4 lakes and...

An understanding of the magnitude and frequency of low-flow discharges is an important part of protecting surface-water resources and planning for municipal and industrial economic expansion. Low-flow characteristics are summarized for 7 continuous-record gaging stations and 23 partial-record measuring sites in the Deep River Basin in North Carolina. Records of discharge collected...

An important part of the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program is the analysis of existing data in each of the NAWQA study areas. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) has an extensive aquatic benthic macroinvertebrate communities in streams (benthic invertebrates) database maintained by the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point...

Nitrate concentrations (as nitrogen) were analyzed in water from 73 wells completed in surficial aquifers. Water from about one-third of the wells had concentrations greater than 10 mg/L (milligrams per liter), the regulatory limit for drinking water established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Nitrate concentrations: (1) were greater in water from wells in agricultural...

Confined glacial and bedrock aquifers are present within Quaternary and Cretaceous deposits that fill buried valleys incised in the Sioux Quartzite surface in Rock County, in southwestern Minnesota and Minnehaha County, South Dakota. This report describes the areal extent, thickness, water-bearing characteristics, water-supply potential, and water-quality characteristics of confined...

We examined the abundance and species richness of birds breeding in floodplain forests of the Upper Mississippi River from 1992 to 1994 to identify effects of a major flood in 1993 on the bird assemblage. Sixty-five study plots were divided into treatments and controls based on whether they were flooded in 1993. Among 84 species observed on all plots, 41 species decreased in abundance...

Phosphorus retention by wetland sediments and vegetation was investigated in Jackson Creek wetland, an extension of an existing prairie marsh in southeastern Wisconsin. The extended wetland construction was undertaken in 1992-93 to help reduce the phosphorus loading to a downstream eutrophic lake. Two approaches were used to study potential and actual phosphorus retention in the system...

Vinyl chloride has been detected in water from the Saginaw aquifer near Lansing Board of Water and Light wells in the north Lansing well field. These public-supply wells have the potential to withdraw contaminated ground water. The effects of reduced grid spacing for the existing TriCounty regional ground-water-flow model on local ground-water movement were investigated. This refinement...