Mission Areas
Water Resources
Water information is fundamental to national and local economic well-being, protection of life and property, and effective management of the Nation’s water resources. The USGS works with partners to monitor, assess, conduct targeted research, and deliver information on a wide range of water resources and conditions including streamflow, groundwater, water quality, and water use and availability.
USGS Water Data for the Nation
Surface-water, groundwater, water-quality, and water-use data collected at approximately 1.9 million sites across all 50 states.
Get dataMessage from the Associate Director for Water
Learn more about the WMA from Dr. Don Cline, the Associate Director for Water Resources.
ReadPopular Water Data and Tools
Explore our science by the topical areas that drive the research and projects conducted by our Programs.
USGS Water Data for the Nation
National Groundwater Monitoring Network Data Portal
More data and toolsNews
Updated Interactive Map Showing Groundwater Levels in the Upper Klamath Basin Aids Water, Land Managers
The U.S. Geological Survey recently upgraded the Upper Klamath Basin Collaborative Groundwater Monitoring website to provide information on current groundwater conditions in the upper Klamath Basin.
Uranium in Grand Canyon Region Groundwater Mostly Complies with Federal Health Standards
Nearly 95% of samples collected from 206 locations over 40 years show uranium concentrations less than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Maximum Contaminant Level for drinking water, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey report.
USGS Patents: A Novel Approach to Science
At the USGS, we talk about how our science is designed to help decision-makers, resource managers, and the public tackle the challenges of our day, from climate change, to natural resources, to natural hazards. In most cases, our research takes the form of peer-reviewed, published papers or data that have been reviewed and brought up to USGS standards for release.
Publications
Populations using public-supply groundwater in the conterminous U.S. 2010; Identifying the wells, hydrogeologic regions, and hydrogeologic mapping units
Most Americans receive their drinking water from publicly supplied sources, a large portion of it from groundwater. Mapping these populations consistently and at a high resolution is important for understanding where the resource is used and needs to be protected. The results show that 269 million people are supplied by public supply, 107 million...
Johnson, Tyler D.; Belitz, Kenneth; Kauffman, Leon J.; Watson, Elise; Wilson, John T. Post-fire temporal trends in soil-physical and -hydraulic properties and simulated runoff generation: Insights from different burn severities in the 2013 Black Forest Fire, CO, USA
Burn severity influences on post-fire recovery of soil-hydraulic properties controlling runoff generation are poorly understood despite the importance for parameterizing infiltration models. We measured soil-hydraulic properties of field-saturated hydraulic conductivity (Kfs), sorptivity (S), and wetting front potential (ψf) for four years after...
Ebel, Brian A.; Moody, John A.; Martin, Deborah A. Evaluation of ELISA for the analysis of imidacloprid in biological matrices: Cross-reactivities, matrix interferences, and comparison to LC-MS/MS
Imidacloprid is among the most used pesticides worldwide and there are toxicity concerns for nontarget organisms. Accurate and sensitive methods are necessary to quantitate imidacloprid concentrations in biological matrices to better understand their fate and effects. Here we evaluated an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit for...
Gross, Michael S.; Woodward, Emily; Hladik, Michelle