Publications

The weighted average radon-222 concentration of indoor air in homes located on Wisconsin Indian Reservations is 5.8 picocuries per liter, which exceeds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency action limit of 4 picocuries per liter. Ground water is the principle source of drinking water on Wisconsin Indian Reservations and generally accounts for about 5 percent of the total indoor air...

The Nonpoint Source Water Pollution Abatement Program was created in 1978 by the Wisconsin Legislature. The goal of the program is to improve and protect the water quality of lakes, streams, wetlands, and ground water within selected priority watersheds by controlling sources of nonpoint pollution. For each selected watershed, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources drafts a...

Water-resources data were collected in the Bad River Indian Reservation of northern Wisconsin from 1983 through 1987. Some data are interpreted to describe ground-water flow, groundwater quality, streamflow, and surface-water quality. Data also are presented in tables and appendixes for baseline reference. Precambrian sandstone and basalt underlie varying thicknesses of sandy till...

The U.S. Geological Survey has studied the ground-water quality within two areas of the Red River of the North Basin in southeastern North Dakota and west-central Minnesota. Although both areas are underlain by sandy surficial aquifers over which intensive irrigated agriculture dominates the land use, their ground-water quality differs. Ground water from the eastern study area has...

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB's) in the bottom sediment and water column of Little Lake Butte des Morts were studied by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Geological Survey. The lake is a 8-kilometer-long impoundment of the Fox River between Lake Winnebago and Appleton, Wisconsin. Discharge of PCB's into the lake by paper mills and waste-treatment plants has...

Devils Lake is a 200 km2 terminal lake that contains sodium sulfate type water. Dissolved solids concentrations range from about 3,500 mg/L to 10,000 mg/L depending on location To investigate geochemical processes in the bottom sediments of Devils Lake, sediment cores were collected at two sites in the western half of the lake during a period of bottom water oxygen depletion. The upper...

No abstract available.

The Red River of the North drainage basin (herein referred to as Red River Basin) within the United States is a study unit under the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) program. The overall goals of this program, initiated to better define the status and trends of the Nation’s water quality, are to address regional and national water-quality issues in...

No abstract available.

Four month-long field experiments investigated movements of water and solutes through unsaturated sand plains near Princeton, Minnesota, and Oakes, North Dakota. Atrazine and bromide were applied to bare soils and soils planted with corn. The field plots were irrigated according to local farming practices. At the end of each experiment, unsaturated soils were analyzed for atrazine and...

A thorough understanding of a lake's hydrology is essential for many lake studies. In some situations the interactions between groundwater systems and lakes are complex; in other cases the hydrology of a multilake system needs to be quantified. In such places, stable isotopes offer an alternative to the more traditional piezometer networks, which are costly to install and time-consuming...

The U.S. Geological Survey began a research project at the site of a crude-oil spill near Bemidji, Minnesota in 1983. The project is part of the U.S. Geological Survey's Toxic Substances Hydrology Program. The objectives of research at the site are to obtain an understanding of the mobilization, transport, and fate of petroleum derivatives in the shallow subsurface and to use this...