Lakes and Reservoirs

This searchable online database provides Health-Based Screening Levels (HBSLs) for hundreds of chemicals, including pesticides and degradates. HBSLs are non-enforceable benchmark concentrations of contaminants in water. These screening levels supplement federal drinking-water standards and guidelines.

Sediment cores let us look back in time at the contaminant history of a watershed. Learn about what lake and reservoir sediment cores tell us about trends in metals, organochlorine pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and other sediment-related contaminants.

In 1991, Congress established the National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Project to address where, when, why, and how the Nation's water quality has changed, or is likely to change in the future, in response to human activities and natural factors. This page discusses the first two decadal cycles of NAWQA research from 1991 through 2012.

The Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge, just 7 miles south of downtown Albuquerque on the Rio Grande, will reconnect people, especially young people, with nature in this highly populated area. The USGS is gathering data that will help gauge the success of habitat restoration efforts.

The USGS works with a wide range of cooperators to investigate many aspects of water quality. The newly integrated USGS Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Water Science Center is assisting in furthering urban water-quality research in Northwest Indiana.

USGS scientists are using high-resolution handheld and airborne thermal imaging cameras in groundwater/surface-water exchange studies and other investigations where surface temperature contrasts indicate various hydrological processes. These cameras are used to quickly locate and characterize thermal (temperature) anomalies along streams, lakes, wetlands, estuaries, and across the landscape...

Locating and quantifying exchanges of groundwater and surface water, along with characterizing geologic structure, is essential to water-resource managers and hydrologists for the development of effective water-resource policy, protection, and management. The USGS conducts applied research to evaluate the use of new or emerging hydrogeophysical tools and methods to improve our understanding of...

Patent for a sequential, time-integrated collector having an electronic controller that actuates either of two electrically-actuated valves, each connected to a water reservoir. (Full details provided by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website.)

Is water quality getting better or worse? Answering this deceptively simple question has been a fundamental objective of the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment Project’s research. Learn about trends in contaminants in the nation’s streams and rivers, trends in contaminants that collect in the bed sediment of streams and lakes, and changes in the quality of the nation’s groundwater.

Stream, river, and lake bed sediment are reservoirs for many contaminants. These contaminants include some “legacy” contaminants, like DDT, PCBs, and chlordane, and chemicals currently in use, like the insecticide bifenthrin and many flame retardants. Learn about techniques used to study sediment-associated contaminants and their importance to aquatic biota.

Although calcium carbonate reaction kinetics has important application in several areas of Earth Science, the mechanism of natural organic matter mediation of carbonate minerals growth and dissolution rates remains largely unknown. This project uses multiple approaches to study calcium carbonate formation and dissolution rates in surface water and groundwater systems.