Science and Products
Filter Total Items: 25
Water quality sites indexed to NHDPlus v2.1 flowlines for the 2012 and the 2017 periods of the U.S. Geological Survey's Surface Water Status and Trends project
This data release provides a list of 2,304 water-quality sampling sites indexed to NHDPlus v2.1 flowlines along with the verified ComIDs. ComIDs are the unique identifiers for NHDPlus flowlines and allow the sites to be joined to ancillary and watershed information from other sources published for that purpose. The sites include those assembled for the period 1972-2012 by the U.S. Geological Surve
Changes in imperviousness for U.S. urban areas, 1974-2012
This product consists of two sets of imperviousness calculations for 3,535 urban areas and urban clusters in the conterminous United States. Imperviousness is given as the percent of the area covered by impervious surfaces, such as roads, buildings, or parking lots. One set of calculations is for the time periods 2001, 2006, and 2011, based on the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Land Cover
Water-quality and streamflow datasets used in Weighted Regressions on Time, Discharge, and Season (WRTDS) models to determine trends in the Nation’s rivers and streams, 1972-2017
In 1991, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) began a study of more than 50 major river basins across the Nation as part of the National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) project. One of the major goals of the NAWQA project was to determine how river water quality has changed over time. To support that goal, long-term consistent and comparable monitoring has been conducted by the USGS on streams and r
Nutrient balances, river loads, and a counterfactual analysis to determine drivers of Mississippi River nitrogen and phosphorus loads between 1975 and 2017
This data release includes data processing scripts, data products, and associated metadata for a study investigating trends in Mississippi River (MR) nitrogen and phosphorus loads to the Gulf of Mexico. This data release consists of three main components: 1) Nitrogen and phosphorus balances, which account for major nutrient inputs (fertilizer, manure, waste water treatment facility effluent, atmos
Water Level Altitude in Bedrock Wells and Meteorological Data at the Masser Groundwater Recharge Site between February 1 and December 31, 1999
This product contains time-series data for groundwater level altitudes in bedrock boreholes and meteorological information from a site administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS). The site, referred to as the Masser Groundwater Recharge Site, is located in the Valley and Ridge Physiographic Province of eastern-central Pennsylvania, USA, approximat
Mapping of 101 agricultural pesticides annually for 2013-2017 for the conterminous United States
This dataset consists of a series of 1-kilometer rasters which provide a mapping of the estimated use of 101 agricultural pesticide compounds for the conterminous United States. Each compound is mapped annually for the years 2013 through 2017, thus there are 505 rasters posted (101 compounds x 5 years). The datasets were created by taking previously-published county-level estimates of kilograms of
Tabular county-level nitrogen and phosphorus estimates from fertilizer and manure for approximately 5-year periods from 1950 to 2017
This product provides tabular estimates of kilograms of nitrogen and phosphorus from a) fertilizer, and b) manure, for counties in the conterminous United States for the period 1950-2017. Data are generated for approximate five-year periods over the time, coinciding with U.S. Department of Agriculture Census of Agriculture census years. This data release also includes a model archive suitable for
Tabular data for selected items from the Census of Agriculture for the period 1950-2017 for counties in the conterminous United States
This product provides tabular data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Census of Agriculture for selected items for the period 1950-2017 for counties in the conterminous United States. Data from 1950-2012 are taken from LaMotte (2015) and 2017 data are retrieved from the USDA QuickStats online tool. Data which are withheld in the Census of Agriculture are filled with estimates. The data
Lotic vs. Lentic Water: a U.S. national 30-meter raster classification of water areas by velocity
This dataset consists of a national 30-meter raster which classifies pixels representing water from the National Land Cover Database 2016 (NLCD 2016) according to their estimated velocity regime. At the broadest classification, the data are mapped into two groups: "Lentic", representing water bodies such as lakes, ponds, oceans, and bays, and "Lotic", representing flowing water, such as streams, r
Multi-source surface-water-quality data and U.S. Geological Survey streamgage match for the Delaware River Basin
Jointly managed by multiple states and the federal government, there are many ongoing efforts to characterize and understand water quality in the Delaware River Basin (DRB). Many State, Federal and non-profit organizations have collected surface-water-quality samples across the DRB for decades and many of these data are available through the National Water Quality Monitoring Council's Water Qualit
Estimates of discharge from wastewater treatment plants for 1,518 U.S. Geological Survey study watersheds, 1978 through 2012
This product consists of a table of annual discharge estimates in millions of gallons per day from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) for 1,518 watersheds in the conterminous United States. The data are based on information extracted from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Watersheds Needs Survey. The data are for 13 time periods, beginning in 1978 and ending in 2012. Total nitrogen
Estimating the presence of paved surface parking lots in the conterminous U.S. from land use coefficients for 1974, 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2012
Parking lots may be a significant source of pollution. Oil, sediments, and heavy metals may accumulate on their surface, then be flushed into rivers, streams, and lakes via rainfall. At present no dataset provides a mapping or estimation of parking lot area or locations nationwide. This product consists of a time series of five national 60-meter raster datasets which estimate the proportion of eac
Filter Total Items: 21
Mapping areas of groundwater susceptible to transient contamination events from rapid infiltration into shallow fractured-rock aquifers in agricultural regions of the conterminous United States
Current time-invariant groundwater vulnerability assessments may not capture intermittent contamination events in landscape areas that experience rapid infiltration following precipitation or snowmelt. Occurrences of rapid infiltration and intermittent degradation of groundwater quality are frequently reported in fractured-rock aquifers. This investigation identifies landscape areas underlain by f
Long-term Mississippi River trends expose shifts in the river load response to watershed nutrient balances between 1975 and 2017
Excess nutrients transported by the Mississippi River (MR) contribute to hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. Nutrient balances are key drivers to river nutrient loads and represent inputs (fertilizer, manure, deposition, wastewater, N-fixation, and weathering) minus outputs (nutrient uptake and removal in harvest, and N emissions). Here, we quantified annual changes in nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) r
Estimates of county-level nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer and manure from 1950 through 2017 in the conterminous United States
This report and associated dataset provide tabular county-level estimates of kilograms of nitrogen and phosphorus generated from two sources: (a) fertilizer from commercial sources and (b) livestock-based manure, for the period 1950 through 2017 for the conterminous United States. Datasets collected during this time span are for intervals of approximately 5 years that coincide with the U.S. Depart
Landscape drivers of dynamic change in water quality of US rivers
Water security is a top concern for social well-being and dramatic changes in the availability of freshwater have occurred as a result of human uses and landscape management. Elevated nutrient loading and perturbations to major ion composition have resulted from human activities and have degraded freshwater resources. This study addresses the emerging nature of stream water quality in the 21st ce
Regional patterns of anthropogenic influences on streams and rivers in the conterminous United States, from the early 1970s to 2012
This paper introduces a dataset containing consistent time-series measurements of anthropogenic activities potentially affecting stream quality across the conterminous United States and summarizes the most noteworthy trends from 61 variables in 16 categories. Data include measures of atmospheric deposition, agricultural production, livestock, urbanization, irrigation, land use, nutrients from fer
Assessing water-quality changes in U.S. rivers at multiple geographic scales using results from probabilistic and targeted monitoring
Two commonly used approaches for water quality monitoring are probabilistic and targeted. In a probabilistic approach like the US Environmental Protection Agency’s National Rivers and Streams Assessment, monitoring sites are selected using a statistically representative approach. In a targeted approach like that used by many monitoring organizations, monitoring sites are chosen individually to ans
Water-quality trends in the nation’s rivers and streams, 1972–2012—Data preparation, statistical methods, and trend results
Since passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, Federal, State, and local governments have invested billions of dollars to reduce pollution entering rivers and streams. To understand the return on these investments and to effectively manage and protect the Nation’s water resources in the future, we need to know how and why water quality has been changing over time. As part of the National Water-Qual
U.S. conterminous wall-to-wall anthropogenic land use trends (NWALT), 1974–2012
This dataset provides a U.S. national 60-meter, 19-class mapping of anthropogenic land uses for five time periods: 1974, 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2012. The 2012 dataset is based on a slightly modified version of the National Land Cover Database 2011 (NLCD 2011) that was recoded to a schema of land uses, and mapped back in time to develop datasets for the four earlier eras. The time periods coincide w
Predicting the likelihood of altered streamflows at ungauged rivers across the conterminous United States
An approach is presented in this study to aid water-resource managers in characterizing streamflow alteration at ungauged rivers. Such approaches can be used to take advantage of the substantial amounts of biological data collected at ungauged rivers to evaluate the potential ecological consequences of altered streamflows. National-scale random forest statistical models are developed to predict th
The quality of our Nation’s waters--ecological health in the Nation's streams, 1993-2005
This report summarizes a national assessment of the ecological health of streams done by the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA). Healthy functioning stream ecosystems provide society with many benefits, including water purification, flood control, nutrient recycling, waste decomposition, fisheries, and aesthetics. The value to society of many of these
Generation of a U.S. national urban land use product
Characterization of urban land uses is essential for many applications. However, differentiating among thematically-detailed urban land uses (residential, commercial, industrial, institutional, recreational, etc.) over broad areas is challenging, in part because image-based solutions are not ideal for establishing the contextual basis for identifying economic function and use. At present no curren
GAGES-II: Geospatial Attributes of Gages for Evaluating Streamflow
This dataset, termed "GAGES II", an acronym for Geospatial Attributes of Gages for Evaluating Streamflow, version II, provides geospatial data and classifications for 9,322 stream gages maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). It is an update to the original GAGES, which was published as a Data Paper on the journal Ecology's website (Falcone and others, 2010b) in 2010. The GAGES II dataset
Science and Products
- Data
Filter Total Items: 25
Water quality sites indexed to NHDPlus v2.1 flowlines for the 2012 and the 2017 periods of the U.S. Geological Survey's Surface Water Status and Trends project
This data release provides a list of 2,304 water-quality sampling sites indexed to NHDPlus v2.1 flowlines along with the verified ComIDs. ComIDs are the unique identifiers for NHDPlus flowlines and allow the sites to be joined to ancillary and watershed information from other sources published for that purpose. The sites include those assembled for the period 1972-2012 by the U.S. Geological SurveChanges in imperviousness for U.S. urban areas, 1974-2012
This product consists of two sets of imperviousness calculations for 3,535 urban areas and urban clusters in the conterminous United States. Imperviousness is given as the percent of the area covered by impervious surfaces, such as roads, buildings, or parking lots. One set of calculations is for the time periods 2001, 2006, and 2011, based on the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Land CoverWater-quality and streamflow datasets used in Weighted Regressions on Time, Discharge, and Season (WRTDS) models to determine trends in the Nation’s rivers and streams, 1972-2017
In 1991, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) began a study of more than 50 major river basins across the Nation as part of the National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) project. One of the major goals of the NAWQA project was to determine how river water quality has changed over time. To support that goal, long-term consistent and comparable monitoring has been conducted by the USGS on streams and rNutrient balances, river loads, and a counterfactual analysis to determine drivers of Mississippi River nitrogen and phosphorus loads between 1975 and 2017
This data release includes data processing scripts, data products, and associated metadata for a study investigating trends in Mississippi River (MR) nitrogen and phosphorus loads to the Gulf of Mexico. This data release consists of three main components: 1) Nitrogen and phosphorus balances, which account for major nutrient inputs (fertilizer, manure, waste water treatment facility effluent, atmosWater Level Altitude in Bedrock Wells and Meteorological Data at the Masser Groundwater Recharge Site between February 1 and December 31, 1999
This product contains time-series data for groundwater level altitudes in bedrock boreholes and meteorological information from a site administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS). The site, referred to as the Masser Groundwater Recharge Site, is located in the Valley and Ridge Physiographic Province of eastern-central Pennsylvania, USA, approximatMapping of 101 agricultural pesticides annually for 2013-2017 for the conterminous United States
This dataset consists of a series of 1-kilometer rasters which provide a mapping of the estimated use of 101 agricultural pesticide compounds for the conterminous United States. Each compound is mapped annually for the years 2013 through 2017, thus there are 505 rasters posted (101 compounds x 5 years). The datasets were created by taking previously-published county-level estimates of kilograms ofTabular county-level nitrogen and phosphorus estimates from fertilizer and manure for approximately 5-year periods from 1950 to 2017
This product provides tabular estimates of kilograms of nitrogen and phosphorus from a) fertilizer, and b) manure, for counties in the conterminous United States for the period 1950-2017. Data are generated for approximate five-year periods over the time, coinciding with U.S. Department of Agriculture Census of Agriculture census years. This data release also includes a model archive suitable forTabular data for selected items from the Census of Agriculture for the period 1950-2017 for counties in the conterminous United States
This product provides tabular data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Census of Agriculture for selected items for the period 1950-2017 for counties in the conterminous United States. Data from 1950-2012 are taken from LaMotte (2015) and 2017 data are retrieved from the USDA QuickStats online tool. Data which are withheld in the Census of Agriculture are filled with estimates. The dataLotic vs. Lentic Water: a U.S. national 30-meter raster classification of water areas by velocity
This dataset consists of a national 30-meter raster which classifies pixels representing water from the National Land Cover Database 2016 (NLCD 2016) according to their estimated velocity regime. At the broadest classification, the data are mapped into two groups: "Lentic", representing water bodies such as lakes, ponds, oceans, and bays, and "Lotic", representing flowing water, such as streams, rMulti-source surface-water-quality data and U.S. Geological Survey streamgage match for the Delaware River Basin
Jointly managed by multiple states and the federal government, there are many ongoing efforts to characterize and understand water quality in the Delaware River Basin (DRB). Many State, Federal and non-profit organizations have collected surface-water-quality samples across the DRB for decades and many of these data are available through the National Water Quality Monitoring Council's Water QualitEstimates of discharge from wastewater treatment plants for 1,518 U.S. Geological Survey study watersheds, 1978 through 2012
This product consists of a table of annual discharge estimates in millions of gallons per day from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) for 1,518 watersheds in the conterminous United States. The data are based on information extracted from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Watersheds Needs Survey. The data are for 13 time periods, beginning in 1978 and ending in 2012. Total nitrogenEstimating the presence of paved surface parking lots in the conterminous U.S. from land use coefficients for 1974, 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2012
Parking lots may be a significant source of pollution. Oil, sediments, and heavy metals may accumulate on their surface, then be flushed into rivers, streams, and lakes via rainfall. At present no dataset provides a mapping or estimation of parking lot area or locations nationwide. This product consists of a time series of five national 60-meter raster datasets which estimate the proportion of eac - Publications
Filter Total Items: 21
Mapping areas of groundwater susceptible to transient contamination events from rapid infiltration into shallow fractured-rock aquifers in agricultural regions of the conterminous United States
Current time-invariant groundwater vulnerability assessments may not capture intermittent contamination events in landscape areas that experience rapid infiltration following precipitation or snowmelt. Occurrences of rapid infiltration and intermittent degradation of groundwater quality are frequently reported in fractured-rock aquifers. This investigation identifies landscape areas underlain by fLong-term Mississippi River trends expose shifts in the river load response to watershed nutrient balances between 1975 and 2017
Excess nutrients transported by the Mississippi River (MR) contribute to hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. Nutrient balances are key drivers to river nutrient loads and represent inputs (fertilizer, manure, deposition, wastewater, N-fixation, and weathering) minus outputs (nutrient uptake and removal in harvest, and N emissions). Here, we quantified annual changes in nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) rEstimates of county-level nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer and manure from 1950 through 2017 in the conterminous United States
This report and associated dataset provide tabular county-level estimates of kilograms of nitrogen and phosphorus generated from two sources: (a) fertilizer from commercial sources and (b) livestock-based manure, for the period 1950 through 2017 for the conterminous United States. Datasets collected during this time span are for intervals of approximately 5 years that coincide with the U.S. DepartLandscape drivers of dynamic change in water quality of US rivers
Water security is a top concern for social well-being and dramatic changes in the availability of freshwater have occurred as a result of human uses and landscape management. Elevated nutrient loading and perturbations to major ion composition have resulted from human activities and have degraded freshwater resources. This study addresses the emerging nature of stream water quality in the 21st ceRegional patterns of anthropogenic influences on streams and rivers in the conterminous United States, from the early 1970s to 2012
This paper introduces a dataset containing consistent time-series measurements of anthropogenic activities potentially affecting stream quality across the conterminous United States and summarizes the most noteworthy trends from 61 variables in 16 categories. Data include measures of atmospheric deposition, agricultural production, livestock, urbanization, irrigation, land use, nutrients from ferAssessing water-quality changes in U.S. rivers at multiple geographic scales using results from probabilistic and targeted monitoring
Two commonly used approaches for water quality monitoring are probabilistic and targeted. In a probabilistic approach like the US Environmental Protection Agency’s National Rivers and Streams Assessment, monitoring sites are selected using a statistically representative approach. In a targeted approach like that used by many monitoring organizations, monitoring sites are chosen individually to ansWater-quality trends in the nation’s rivers and streams, 1972–2012—Data preparation, statistical methods, and trend results
Since passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, Federal, State, and local governments have invested billions of dollars to reduce pollution entering rivers and streams. To understand the return on these investments and to effectively manage and protect the Nation’s water resources in the future, we need to know how and why water quality has been changing over time. As part of the National Water-QualU.S. conterminous wall-to-wall anthropogenic land use trends (NWALT), 1974–2012
This dataset provides a U.S. national 60-meter, 19-class mapping of anthropogenic land uses for five time periods: 1974, 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2012. The 2012 dataset is based on a slightly modified version of the National Land Cover Database 2011 (NLCD 2011) that was recoded to a schema of land uses, and mapped back in time to develop datasets for the four earlier eras. The time periods coincide wPredicting the likelihood of altered streamflows at ungauged rivers across the conterminous United States
An approach is presented in this study to aid water-resource managers in characterizing streamflow alteration at ungauged rivers. Such approaches can be used to take advantage of the substantial amounts of biological data collected at ungauged rivers to evaluate the potential ecological consequences of altered streamflows. National-scale random forest statistical models are developed to predict thThe quality of our Nation’s waters--ecological health in the Nation's streams, 1993-2005
This report summarizes a national assessment of the ecological health of streams done by the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA). Healthy functioning stream ecosystems provide society with many benefits, including water purification, flood control, nutrient recycling, waste decomposition, fisheries, and aesthetics. The value to society of many of theseGeneration of a U.S. national urban land use product
Characterization of urban land uses is essential for many applications. However, differentiating among thematically-detailed urban land uses (residential, commercial, industrial, institutional, recreational, etc.) over broad areas is challenging, in part because image-based solutions are not ideal for establishing the contextual basis for identifying economic function and use. At present no currenGAGES-II: Geospatial Attributes of Gages for Evaluating Streamflow
This dataset, termed "GAGES II", an acronym for Geospatial Attributes of Gages for Evaluating Streamflow, version II, provides geospatial data and classifications for 9,322 stream gages maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). It is an update to the original GAGES, which was published as a Data Paper on the journal Ecology's website (Falcone and others, 2010b) in 2010. The GAGES II dataset - News