Publications

The Management Systems Evaluation Area (MSEA) program was a multiscale, interagency initiative to evaluate the effects of agricultural systems on water quality in the midwest corn belt. The primary objective of the Minnesota MSEA was to evaluate the effects of ridge-tillage practices in a corn and soybean farming system on ground-water quality. The 65-hectare Minnesota MSEA was located...

The statewide average precipitation of 30.66 inches for the 1994 water year was 96 percent of the normal annual precipitation of 31.79 inches for water years 1961-90. Average precipitation values ranged from 81 percent of normal in southeastern Wisconsin to 103 percent of normal in west-central Wisconsin (Pamela Naber Knox, UW-Extension, Geological and Natural History Survey, written...

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...

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...

Mercury has been well known as an environmental pollutant for several decades. As early as the 1950's it was established that emissions of mercury to the environment could have serious effects on human health. These early studies demonstrated that fish and other wildlife from various ecosystems commonly attain mercury levels of toxicological concern when directly affected by mercury...

No abstract available.

The Tri-County region includes Clinton, Eaton, and Ingham Counties in the south-central Lower Peninsula of Michigan (fig. 1). People in the Lansing Metropolitan area, which is located near the center of this region, generally enjoy high-quality drinking water. In fact, taste testers ranked Lansing's water as second in the Nation at the 1988 American Water Resources Association Water-Use...

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...