Water Availability and Use

The Issue: Knowing when streams have water and when they run dry—called streamflow permanence—is necessary for managing water resources, protecting ecosystems, and responding to regulations and policies. In the Pacific Northwest, a major research priority is understanding how streamflow permanence might change as snowpacks shrink and summers become hotter and drier. How USGS will help: USGS is...

The USGS, in partnership with the Nooksack Indian Tribe, is gathering information to better understand the connections between streams, wetlands, and groundwater in the South Fork Nooksack River Basin.

Scatter Creek, a tributary to the Chehalis River, WA, experiences summer conditions that threaten native fish populations. Each year, parts of Scatter Creek go dry. Dry stretches of stream disconnect the habitat, so that fish can’t move upstream and downstream. Some of the water flowing through streams may seep into the ground and enter aquifers, meaning that the water is lost from the stream. The...

Not all rivers and streams flow year-round. Understanding when and where streams flow or go dry is critical for managing land use, water quality, and water availability on landscapes. The USGS and partners are studying streamflow permanence in the Pacific Northwest. We are gathering data, developing new models, and providing data visualization and outreach tools.

The Issue: Forests in the Pacific Northwest have changed substantially over the past hundred years because of logging, changing forest management methods, and climate change. These forests contain a dense network of small headwater streams that supply cold, clean water and support 52 amphibian species. These amphibians live both in the cold streams and in the cool, moist areas nearby. Natural...

The Issue: Changes in the water temperature and flow regimes of rivers throughout the western United States have contributed to shifts in the ranges of aquatic species that they support. Cold-water species such as fish are sensitive to changes in water temperature, which regulates their physiological functions and behavior. How USGS will help: A spatial stream network (SSN) model was developed...

The Issue: Ice jams can occur at the outlet of Osoyoos Lake on the border of Canada and the United States, resulting in a decrease or complete interruption in streamflow on the Okanogan River. These ice jams appear to be occurring at a greater frequency than they have in the past and interruptions in streamflow can hinder the passage of anadromous fish and impact downstream water rights and water...

The Issue: The White River/Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park currently uses surface water for supplying water to local visitor and operational facilities. The Park is considering instead to use groundwater supplies that would likely be more resilient and less prone to contamination, but they need a better understanding of groundwater in the upper White River watershed to assure that park...

The Issue: Native American treaty rights depend on the availability of adequate and high-quality streamflow across the Western Washington, which can be degraded by water and land use, reservoir operations, and climate change among other factors. Streamflow during critical low-flow periods depend on groundwater discharge from aquifers, which also is vulnerable to human activities in the Western...

The Issue: The Visualizing Ecosystem Land Management Assessments (VELMA) model is a spatially explicit, eco-hydrological watershed model that was developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The VELMA model can be used to examine a wide variety of environmental systems; however, an area where the model could be improved is in its accounting of the interaction of groundwater and...

The Issue: Past activities at Joint Base Lewis–McChord (JBLM)—located in west-central Washington—resulted in releases of hazardous waste and contaminants to the environment, and the most recent chemical of concern is per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). PFAS can enter groundwater and travel through the subsurface. Water-resource managers need to understand where groundwater flows in order...

The Issue: The Yakima Training Center (YTC) is a military training installation located in south-central Washington. Recent sampling of groundwater wells on and off the base has detected per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—man-made chemicals that, in some areas, exceed State or Federal drinking-water standards. The local geology is highly complex, featuring folded and faulted bedrock...