Publications

Evapotranspiration (ET) mapping at the Landsat spatial resolution (100 m) is essential to fully understand water use and water availability at the field scale. Water use estimates in the Colorado River Basin (CRB), which has diverse ecosystems and complex hydro-climatic regions, will be helpful to water planners and managers. Availability of Landsat 8 images, starting in 2013, provides...

A database of borehole geophysical logs and other types of data files were compiled as part of ongoing studies of water availability and assessment of brackish- and saline-water resources. The database contains 4,883 logs from 1,248 wells in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and from a limited number of offshore wells of the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. The...

The Water Availability Tool for Environmental Resources (WATER) is a decision support system (DSS) for the nontidal part of the Delaware River Basin (DRB) that provides a consistent and objective method of simulating streamflow under historical, forecasted, and managed conditions. WATER integrates geospatial sampling of landscape characteristics, including topographic and soil properties...

The Water Availability Tool for Environmental Resources (WATER) is a decision support system for the nontidal part of the Delaware River Basin that provides a consistent and objective method of simulating streamflow under historical, forecasted, and managed conditions. In order to quantify the uncertainty associated with these simulations, however, streamflow and the associated...

Brackish groundwater (BGW) is increasingly used for water supplies where fresh water is scarce, but the distribution and availability of such resources have not been characterized at the national scale in the United States since the 1960s. Apart from its distribution and accessibility, BGW usability is a function of the chemical requirements of the intended use, chemical characteristics...

Increasing demand and competition for limited regional water resources make it difficult to ensure adequate water availability for both human and ecological needs now and into the future. Recognizing the need to improve the tools and information that are available to effectively evaluate water-resource availability, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) identified a National Water Census...

The Arkansas Natural Resources Commission (ANRC) conducts an annual inventory of reported groundwater and surface-water withdrawals in Arkansas in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This report describes withdrawals from groundwater and surface-water resources in Arkansas for 2010. The report compiles withdrawals by county for 10 categories of water use—public supply...

Digital surfaces and thicknesses of selected hydrogeologic units of the Floridan aquifer system were developed to define an updated hydrogeologic framework as part of the U.S. Geological Survey Groundwater Resources Program. The dataset contains structural surfaces depicting the top and base of the aquifer system, its major and minor hydrogeologic units and zones, geophysical marker...

The hydrogeologic framework for the Floridan aquifer system has been revised throughout its extent in Florida and parts of Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina. The updated framework generally conforms to the original framework established by the U.S. Geological Survey in the 1980s, except for adjustments made to the internal boundaries of the Upper and Lower Floridan aquifers and the...

Water use in the United States in 2010 was estimated to be about 355 billion gallons per day (Bgal/d), which was 13 percent less than in 2005. The 2010 estimates put total withdrawals at the lowest level since before 1970. Freshwater withdrawals were 306 Bgal/d, or 86 percent of total withdrawals, and saline-water withdrawals were 48.3 Bgal/d, or 14 percent of total withdrawals. Fresh...

About 355,000 million gallons per day (Mgal/d) of water was withdrawn for use in the United States during 2010, a decline of 13 percent from 2005 and a substantial change from the level of about 400,000 Mgal/d reported from 1985 to 2005. Withdrawals for 2010 were lower than withdrawals estimated for 1970. Fresh surface-water withdrawals (230,000 Mgal/d) were almost 15 percent less than...

Hydro-ecological stream classification-the process of grouping streams by similar hydrologic responses and, by extension, similar aquatic habitat-has been widely accepted and is considered by some to be one of the first steps towards developing ecological flow targets. A new classification of 1543 streamgauges in the contiguous USA is presented by use of a novel and parsimonious approach...