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Michael E Wieczorek

Michael Wieczorek holds a B.S. in Geography from Towson State University (1991). Since 1992, he has worked as a GIS specialist for the National Water Quality Program at the Nebraska and Ohio Water Science Centers and is currently the lead GIS specialist for the Hydrologic Systems Team in NAWQA. He is active in the USGS' Earth-Science Themes Working Group and the Community of Data Integration.

Professional Experience

1992 GIS assistant Central Nebraska Basins Study, Lincoln, Nebraska

1993 GIS assistant Central Nebraska Basins Study, Lawrence, Kansas

1994 Lead GIS specialist Lake Erie-Lake Saint Claire, Columbus, Ohio

1999, GIS Specialist for the Hydrologic Systems Team (HST) of the National Water-Quality Assessment Program (NAWQP).

Education

M.S.

Attended M.S. Program in Geography, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, 1992-1993.

Attended M.S. Program in Geography, Watershed Analysis and Spatial Analysis, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

B.S. in Geography and History, Towson University, 1991.

Skills

  • Geographic Analysis
  • Python
  • R
  • SAS
  • Mapping
  • Spatial analysis
  • Computational methods
  • Geographic information systems (GIS)
  • Statistical analysis

Research / Professional Focus / Current Projects

Watershed modeling, soil mapping, basin creation and watershed statistics, programming, Cycle 3 NAWQA

Selected Bibliography

Attributes for NHDPlus Catchments (Version 1.1) in the Conterminous United States: Artificial Drainage (1992) and Irrigation Types (1997), Data Series Report DS-490-01,Reston, Virginia. Publisher: U.S. Geological Survey

Attributes for NHDPlus Catchments (Version 1.1) for the Conterminous United States: STATSGO Soil Characteristics, Data Series Report DS-490-26,Reston, Virginia. Publisher: U.S. Geological Survey

Attributes for NHDPlus Catchments (Version 1.1) for the Conterminous United States: Nutrient Inputs from Fertilizer and Manure, Nitrogen and Phosphorus (N&P), 2002, Data Series Report DS-490-17,Reston, Virginia. Publisher: U.S. Geological Survey

Attributes for NHDPlus Catchments (Version 1.1) for the Conterminous United States: Nutrient Inputs from Fertilizer and Manure, Nitrogen and Phosphorus (N&P), 2002, Data Series Report DS-490-17,Reston, Virginia. Publisher: U.S. Geological Survey

Gellis, A.C., Pavich, M.J., Ellwein, A.L., Aby, S., Clark, I., Wieczorek, M.E., and Viger, R., Erosion, Storage, and Transport of Sediment in Two Subbasins of the Rio Puerco, New Mexico: Geological Society of America Bulletin. May 2012.

Science and Products

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GIS & Dataset Capabilities @ MD-DE-DC

Spatial analysts at the MD-DE-DC WSC use Geographic Information Systems to interpret data collected through field reconnaissance and downloaded from internal USGS, other federal, state, and local agencies, academic institutions, industry, and other professional contracting organizations. GIS is used to analyze the data using shapefiles and geodatabased information to help prove or disprove...
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Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center
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GIS & Dataset Capabilities @ MD-DE-DC

Spatial analysts at the MD-DE-DC WSC use Geographic Information Systems to interpret data collected through field reconnaissance and downloaded from internal USGS, other federal, state, and local agencies, academic institutions, industry, and other professional contracting organizations. GIS is used to analyze the data using shapefiles and geodatabased information to help prove or disprove...
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USGS science for a changing world logo

Using machine learning to map topographic-soil & densely-patterned sub-surface agricultural drainage (tile drains) from satellite imagery

In the mid-1800s, tile-drains were installed in poorly-drained soils of topographic lows as water management to protect cropland during wet conditions; consequently, estimations of tile-drain location have been based on soil series. Most tile drains are in the Midwest, however each state has farms with tile and tile-drain density has increased in the last decade. Where tile drains quickly remove w
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Community for Data Integration (CDI)
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Using machine learning to map topographic-soil & densely-patterned sub-surface agricultural drainage (tile drains) from satellite imagery

In the mid-1800s, tile-drains were installed in poorly-drained soils of topographic lows as water management to protect cropland during wet conditions; consequently, estimations of tile-drain location have been based on soil series. Most tile drains are in the Midwest, however each state has farms with tile and tile-drain density has increased in the last decade. Where tile drains quickly remove w
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USGS science for a changing world logo

National Stream Summarization: Standardizing Stream-Landscape Summaries

As research and management of natural resources shift from local to regional and national scales, the need for information about aquatic systems to be summarized to multiple scales is becoming more apparent. Recently, four federally funded national stream assessment efforts (USGS Aquatic GAP, USGS National Water-Quality Assessment Program, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] StreamCat, and
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Community for Data Integration (CDI)
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National Stream Summarization: Standardizing Stream-Landscape Summaries

As research and management of natural resources shift from local to regional and national scales, the need for information about aquatic systems to be summarized to multiple scales is becoming more apparent. Recently, four federally funded national stream assessment efforts (USGS Aquatic GAP, USGS National Water-Quality Assessment Program, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] StreamCat, and
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Filter Total Items: 26

Attributes for NHDPlus Version 2.1 Catchments and Modified Routing of Upstream Watersheds for the Conterminous United States: Riparian National Land Cover Data for 2019 Versions for the Years 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2016, and 2019

This tabular data set represents the percent of land cover classes in the riparian zone from the 2019 edition of the National Land Cover databases for the years 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2016 and 2019 compiled for two spatial components of the NHDPlus version 2.1 data suite (NHDPlusv2) for the conterminous United States; 1) individual reach catchments and 2) reach catchments accumulated
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Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center

USGS monthly water balance model inputs and outputs for the conterminous United States, 1895-2020, based on ClimGrid data

This NetCDF represents the monthly inputs and outputs from a United States Geological Survey water-balance model (McCabe and Wolock, 2011) for the conterminous United States for the period 1895-01-01 to 2020-12-31. The source data used to run the water balance model is based on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's(Vose and others, 2020) ClimGrid data for precipitation and temperat
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Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center

Low-Flow Period Seasonality, Trends, and Climate Linkages Across the United States Data Release

This metadata record describes data that characterize low-flow period duration and seasonality, as well as trends and climate linkages at streamgages across the conterminous United States. These data are associated with a publication which looks to answer three questions about low-flow periods in the conterminous United States: (1) how long are these periods and when do they typically start and en
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Oregon Water Science Center

USGS Streamgages in the Conterminous United States Indexed to NHDPlus v2.1 Flowlines to Support Streamgage Watershed InforMation (SWIM), 2021

This U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) data release includes locations for 12,422 USGS streamgages as indexed along the network of streams (flowlines) in NHDPlus Version 2.1 (NHDPlus v2, Moore and Dewald, 2016). The dataset is one of two datasets developed for the Streamgage Watershed InforMation (SWIM) project. This dataset, which is referred to as “SWIM streamgage locations,” was created in support
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New England Water Science Center

Daily average soil moisture and ancillary data from the Noah land surface model in the National Land Data Assimilation version 2 extracted for GAGES-II watersheds, 1980 to 2020

This U.S Geological Survey data release contains soil moisture, actual evapotranspiration, precipitation, and potential evapotranspiration by watershed for the United States from 1980 to 2020. Hourly values from NASA's North American Land Data Assimilation System Phase 2 (NLDAS-2) Noah model were aggregated to daily values and extracted by Geospatial Attributes of Gages for Evaluating Streamflow,
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Nevada Water Science Center

Data-Driven Drought Prediction Project Model Inputs for Upper and Lower Colorado Portions of the National Hydrologic Geo-Spatial Fabric version 1.1 and Select U.S. Geological Survey Streamgage Basins

This metadata record describes a series of data sets of natural, climatic, and anthropogenic landscape features processed as model inputs for the Data-Driven Drought Prediction Project of the Water Resources Mission Area Drought Program. These data are linked to two different spatial units: the National Hydrologic Geospatial Fabric version 1.1 (nhgfv1.1) including their associated individual catch
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Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center

30 Year (1990 - 2019) Annual Average Difference between Precipitation Potential Evapotranspiration

This metadata record describes the 30 year (1990-2019) annual average difference between precipitation potential evapotranspiration in millimeters in geotiff format. The source data is based on the ClimGrid netcdf data for precipitation and temperature (Wieczorek and others, 2022). Units are millimeters.
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Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center

30-Year (1990-2019) Annual Average of DAYMET Precipitation and Temperature for North America

This metadata record describes the 30-year annual average of precipitation in millimeters (mm) and temperature (Celsius) during the period 1990–2019 for North America. The source data were produced by and acquired from DAYMET daily climate data (2020) and presented here as a series of two 1-kilometer resolution GeoTIFF files. An open source python code file used to process the data is also include
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Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center

U.S. Streamflow Drought During the Last Century: annual drought and low flow metrics, annual climate, and trends for the periods 1921-2020, 1951-2020 and 1981-2020

This dataset contains annual flow metrics quantifying drought and low streamflows for USGS GAGES-2 gages in the contiguous U.S. satisfying data completeness checks for the periods 1921-2020, 1951-2020, and 1981-2020. The dataset also contains annual climate variables from the USGS Monthly Water Balance Model (MWBM). The dataset provides trend analysis outputs for annual drought and low flow metric
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Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center, Drought

USGS monthly water balance model inputs and outputs for the conterminous United States, 1895-2020, based on ClimGrid data

This NetCDF represents the monthly inputs and outputs from a United States Geological Survey water-balance model (McCabe and Wolock, 2011) for the conterminous United States for the period 1895-01-01 to 2020-12-31. The source data used to run the water balance model is based on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's(NOAA, 2020) ClimGrid data for precipitation and temperature. This N
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Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center, Drought

Clusters of monthly streamflow values with similar temporal patterns at 555 HCDN sites for the period 1981 to 2019

This data release identifies 555 Hydro-Climatic Data Network (HCDN) streamgages in the conterminous United States during the period 1981-2019 which were grouped according to similarity in their temporal patterns of monthly streamflow.
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Water Resources Mission Area, Drought

Geospatial Fabric for National Hydrologic Modeling, version 1.1

This U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) data release consists of two hydrographic datasets with spatial modeling units consistent with the National Hydrologic Model (NHM) Geospatial Fabric for National Hydrologic Modeling (abbreviated within this document as GFv1, Viger and Bock, 2014). The two datasets found as subpages to this landing page are 1) the GIS (geographic information system) features of th
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Water Resources Mission Area, Colorado Water Science Center

Regional streamflow drought forecasting in the Colorado River Basin using Deep Neural Network models

Process-based, large-scale (e.g., conterminous United States [CONUS]) hydrologic models have struggled to achieve reliable streamflow drought performance in arid regions and for low-flow periods. Deep learning has recently seen broad implementation in streamflow prediction and forecasting research projects throughout the world with performance often equaling or exceeding that of process-based mode
Authors
Scott Douglas Hamshaw, Phillip J. Goodling, Konrad Hafen, John C. Hammond, Ryan R. McShane, Roy Sando, Apoorva Ramesh Shastry, Caelan E. Simeone, David Watkins, Elaheh (Ellie) White, Michael Wieczorek
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Water Resources Mission Area, Climate Research and Development Program, Idaho Water Science Center, Oregon Water Science Center, Wyoming-Montana Water Science Center

Going beyond low flows: Streamflow drought deficit and duration illuminate distinct spatiotemporal drought patterns and trends in the U.S. during the last century

Streamflow drought is a recurring challenge, and understanding spatiotemporal patterns of past droughts is needed to manage future water resources. We examined regional patterns in streamflow drought metrics and compared these metrics to low flow timing and magnitude using long-term daily records for 555 minimally disturbed watersheds. For each streamgage, we calculated streamflow drought duration
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John C. Hammond, Caelan E. Simeone, Jory Seth Hecht, Glenn A. Hodgkins, Melissa Lombard, Gregory J. McCabe, David M. Wolock, Michael Wieczorek, Carolyn G Olson, Todd Caldwell, Robert W. Dudley, Adam N. Price
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Water Resources Mission Area, Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center, Nevada Water Science Center, New England Water Science Center, Oregon Water Science Center, Drought

Estimating urban air pollution contribution to South Platte River nitrogen loads with National Atmospheric Deposition Program data and SPARROW model

Air pollution is commonly disregarded as a source of nutrient loading to impaired surface waters managed under the Clean Water Act per states’ 303(d) list programs. The contribution of air pollution to 2017–2018 South Platte River nitrogen (N) loads was estimated from the headwaters to the gage at Weldona, Colorado, USA (100 km downstream of Denver), using data from the National Atmospheric Deposi
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Gregory A. Wetherbee, Michael Wieczorek, Dale M. Robertson, David A. Saad, Jon Novick, Alisa Mast
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Water Resources Mission Area, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, Colorado Water Science Center, Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center, Upper Midwest Water Science Center

An increase in the slope of the concentration-discharge relation for total organic carbon in major rivers in New England, 1973 to 2019

The mobilization and transport of organic carbon (OC) in rivers and delivery to the near-coastal ocean are important processes in the carbon cycle that are affected by both climate and anthropogenic activities. Riverine OC transport can affect carbon sequestration, contaminant transport, ocean acidification, the formation of toxic disinfection by-products, ocean temperature and phytoplankton produ
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Thomas G. Huntington, Michael Wieczorek
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Water Resources Mission Area, Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program, New England Water Science Center

Mainstems: A logical data model implementing mainstem and drainage basin feature types based on WaterML2 Part 3: HY Features concepts

The Mainstems data model implements the catchment and flowpath concepts from WaterML2 Part 3: Surface Hydrology Features (HY_Features) for persistent, cross-scale, identification of hydrologic features. The data model itself provides a focused and lightweight method to describe hydrologic networks with minimum but sufficient information. The design is intended to provide a model for data integrati
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David L. Blodgett, J. Micheal Johnson, Mark Sondheim, Michael Wieczorek, Nels Frazier
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Water Resources Mission Area

An enhanced hydrologic stream network based on the NHDPlus medium resolution dataset

The National Hydrography Dataset Plus, Version 2.1 (NHDPlusV2.1) is an attribute-rich digital stream network for the conterminous United States, serving as a foundational infrastructure for reporting hydrologic information at both regional and national scales. SPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed attributes (SPARROW) is a process-based statistical model that relies on a digital hydrologic
Authors
John W. Brakebill, Gregory E. Schwarz, Michael E. Wieczorek
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Water Resources Mission Area, National Hydrography

Prediction and inference of flow-duration curves using multi-output neural networks

We develop multi-output neural network models (MNNs) to predict flow-duration curves (FDCs) in 9,203 ungaged locations in the Southeastern United States for six decades between 1950-2009. The model architecture contains multiple response variables in the output layer that correspond to individual quantiles along the FDC. During training, predictions are made for each quantile, and a combined loss
Authors
Scott C. Worland, Scott Steinschneider, William H. Asquith, Rodney Knight, Michael E. Wieczorek
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Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center, Gulf of Mexico

A database of natural monthly streamflow estimates from 1950 to 2015 for the conterminous United States

Quantifying and understanding the natural streamflow regime, defined as expected streamflow that would occur in the absence of anthropogenic modification to the hydrologic system, is critically important for the development of management strategies aimed at protecting aquatic ecosystems. Water balance models have been applied frequently to estimate natural flows, but are limited in the number of p
Authors
Matthew P. Miller, Daren Carlisle, David M. Wolock, Michael Wieczorek
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Water Resources Mission Area

High nitrate concentrations in some Midwest United States streams in 2013 after the 2012 drought

Nitrogen sources in the Mississippi River basin have been linked to degradation of stream ecology and to Gulf of Mexico hypoxia. In 2013, the USGS and the USEPA characterized water quality stressors and ecological conditions in 100 wadeable streams across the midwestern United States. Wet conditions in 2013 followed a severe drought in 2012, a weather pattern associated with elevated nitrogen conc
Authors
Peter C. Van Metre, Jeffrey W. Frey, MaryLynn Musgrove, Naomi Nakagaki, Sharon L. Qi, Barbara Mahler, Michael E. Wieczorek, Daniel T. Button
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Water Resources Mission Area

National water-quality assessment of the Lake Erie-Lake St. Clair Basin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York — Environmental and hydrologic setting

The Lake Erie-Lake St. Clair Basin covers approximately 22,300 mi2 (square miles) in parts of Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Situated in two major physiographic provinces, the Appalachian Plateaus and the Central Lowland, the basin includes varied topographic and geomorphic features that affect the hydrology. As of 1990, the basin was inhabited by approximately 10.4 million p
Authors
G. D. Casey, Donna N. Myers, D. P. Finnegan, Michael E. Wieczorek

xstrm_local

This Python package is intended to assist with summarization of landscape information to stream watershed drainages (local summaries). Methods are built in a generalized way and are intended to support efforts for any stream network having polygon based drainage watersheds. The output of these methods can be used to calculate stream network summaries using xstrm.
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Science Synthesis, Analysis and Research Program, Science Analytics and Synthesis (SAS) Program, Community for Data Integration (CDI)

Science and Products