Water Quality
Water Quality
A measure of the suitability of water for a particular use based on physical, chemical, and biological characteristics.
Filter Total Items: 24
USGS Publications Summarize Water-Quality Trends and Drivers in Urban Streams After 10 Years of Monitoring in Fairfax County, Virginia
Issue : Degraded water quality and ecology in urban streams has been widely documented, but explanations of changing conditions over time are often unavailable. A 15-year collaborative urban stream monitoring effort between the Fairfax County Stormwater Planning Division and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is ongoing and has begun to shed light on this complex issue. In a new USGS report by...
Source Water Monitoring on the Roanoke River in Salem, Virginia
The Roanoke River is the primary source of the City of Salem's drinking water. Threats to water quality in rivers like the Roanoke have increased in recent years, and water authorities as well as residents are concerned about preventing source water contamination. Realtime water quality monitoring is a valuable tool in alerting water authorities such as Salem Water when there are anomalous...
Investigation of Drivers of Harmful Algal Blooms on Lake Anna, Virginia
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Viriginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is monitoring harmful algal blooms (HABs) on Lake Anna in Virginia. The hydrology, water-quality, and weather conditions are evaluated both continuously and discretely to analyze the causes, persistence, and decline of HABs in two tributaries and along Lake Anna. Synoptic monitoring of...
Investigation of Drivers of Harmful Algal Blooms on the Shenandoah River, Virginia
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Viriginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and collaboration with the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB) is monitoring harmful algal blooms (HABs) on the two forks of the Shenandoah River in Virginia. Continuous and discrete water-quality and hydrology data is conducted to understand the drivers, persistence...
Integrated Assessments of Potential Risks to Aquatic Organisms and Public Water Supply from Wastewater-Derived Chemical Mixtures in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed
Proper management of contaminants of emerging concern in the Chesapeake Bay region requires scientific efforts to understand the risk posed to aquatic resources from the “cocktail” of multiple contaminants that is often present. This research aims to assess the occurrence, sources, environmental impacts, biological effects, and the human health impacts of toxic contaminants in rivers.
USGS revises 2020 nontidal load and trend results
Issue: The USGS has revised loads and trends through 2020 from monitoring stations in the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) Nontidal Network (NTN). The original release of the results was in July 2022. During a process to implement a new software package for the next update of NTN data, the USGS discovered some questionable data values. Most of the questionable values were related to a coding...
Summarizing Scientific Findings for Common Stakeholder Questions to Inform Nutrient and Sediment Management Activities in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed
Issue: The Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) partnership is striving to improve water-quality conditions in the Bay by using a variety of management strategies to reduce nutrient and sediment loads. The partnership uses monitoring results and modeling tools to implement management strategies, relying on the scientific community to synthesize existing information and direct new research to address...
Hydrologic, Water-Quality, and Ecological Monitoring and Analysis to Support Stream Restoration Research in Reston, Virginia
The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with Resource Protection Group, Inc. is partnering with Reston Association to monitor the hydrology, water-quality, and ecology of two restored urban streams in Reston, Virginia – Snakeden Branch and The Glade. A combination of continuous and discrete hydrologic and water-quality data are collected to evaluate stream conditions and estimate sediment and...
Appalachian Plateau Groundwater Availablity Study
Pennsylvanian- and Mississippian-age aquifers occupy approximately 86,000 square-miles in the Appalachian Plateaus Physiographic Province of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. As one of several USGS Regional Groundwater Studies, the primary goal of this study is to provide a regional understanding of groundwater flow and availability in the...
Fairfax County Water Resources Monitoring Network
In recent years, hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested into the implementation of Best Management Practices in Fairfax County, Virginia, with the goal of improving water quality. Research has demonstrated that best management practices are effective at smaller scales, but less information is available to document the effectiveness of these best management practices at the watershed...
Hampton Roads Regional Water Quality Monitoring Program
In 2015, the U.S. Geological Survey partnered with the Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD) in cooperation with the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission to implement a water-quality monitoring program in six major cities across the Hampton Roads region. This long-term monitoring program consists of a network of 12 water-quality monitoring stations, 2 per jurisdiction, across the cities...
Clinch River Water Quality and Mussel Health
The Clinch and Powell Rivers flowing from southwestern Virginia through parts of East Tennessee (see Figure 1) support unique and nationally significant endemic and endangered populations of fresh-water mussels and other aquatic fauna. Surveys of mussel and fish community structure over past decades have shown a pattern of decline throughout the Powell River and on parts of the upper Clinch that...