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Paul Barlow

Paul Barlow is a Chief of the Hydrologic Interpretive Branch in the New England Water Science Center.

As Chief of the Hydrologic Interpretive Branch, New England Water Science Center, Paul manages a diverse team of scientists involved in a wide range of water-resources investigations spanning environmental, watershed, and urban hydrology; integrated water-resources modeling; and statistical and geospatial analyses. His technical work has focused on numerical modeling of coupled groundwater/surface-water flow systems and the application of mathematical optimization methods to problems in groundwater management, including streamflow depletion caused by groundwater withdrawals.

Professional Experience

  • Chief, Hydrologic Interpretive Branch, U.S. Geological Survey, New England Water Science Center, 2020 to Present

  • Chief, Earth Systems Modeling Branch, U.S. Geological Survey, Water Mission Area, 2017 to 2020

  • Hydrologist, U.S. Geological Survey, Office of Groundwater, 1998 to 2017

  • Hydrologist, U.S. Geological Survey, New England, Arizona, and California Water Science Centers, 1983 to 1998

Education and Certifications

  • Ph.D. Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut, 1997

  • M.S. Hydrology and Water Resources Administration, University of Arizona, 1987

  • B.S., Geology, Haverford College, 1983

Affiliations and Memberships*

  • National Ground Water Association, 1990 to Present

Honors and Awards

  • John Hem Award for Excellence in Science & Engineering, National Ground Water Association, 2014

Science and Products

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A satellite image of the Yukon River near Stevens Village, Alaska

Satellite-based Remote Sensing of River Discharge

The U.S. Geological Survey and NASA are collaborating on a study to develop methods to estimate river flows from satellite observations.
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Alaska Science Center, New England Water Science Center
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Satellite-based Remote Sensing of River Discharge

The U.S. Geological Survey and NASA are collaborating on a study to develop methods to estimate river flows from satellite observations.
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USGS boat crew on Merrimack River, Massachusetts

Hydrologic Interpretive Program

The mission of the Hydrologic Interpretive Program is to work with stakeholders to design, carry out, and publish scientific studies addressing critical water-resources issues facing New England and the Nation.
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New England Water Science Center
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Hydrologic Interpretive Program

The mission of the Hydrologic Interpretive Program is to work with stakeholders to design, carry out, and publish scientific studies addressing critical water-resources issues facing New England and the Nation.
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Study area, Wickford, Rhode Island

Assessment of Nutrient Transport and Discharge to Coastal Embayments, Wickford, Rhode Island

In 2020 the USGS began a partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 1 Southeast New England Program for Coastal Watershed Restoration (SNEP) and EPA Office of Research and Development (ORD), Atlantic Coastal Sciences Division, Narragansett, RI in support of water-quality and ecological monitoring being conducted by ORD in the coastal waters around Wickford, RI. The USGS...
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New England Water Science Center
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Assessment of Nutrient Transport and Discharge to Coastal Embayments, Wickford, Rhode Island

In 2020 the USGS began a partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 1 Southeast New England Program for Coastal Watershed Restoration (SNEP) and EPA Office of Research and Development (ORD), Atlantic Coastal Sciences Division, Narragansett, RI in support of water-quality and ecological monitoring being conducted by ORD in the coastal waters around Wickford, RI. The USGS...
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Map of the water table in Cape Cod, Massachusetts

USGS Publications on the Water Resources of Cape Cod and Southeastern Massachusetts

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has been investigating groundwater and surface-water resources on Cape Cod for more than 50 years. Recent studies have focused on the sources of water to public-supply wells, ponds, streams, and coastal areas; transport and discharge of nitrogen and contaminants of emerging concern derived from domestic and municipal wastewater disposal; fate and transport of...
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New England Water Science Center
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USGS Publications on the Water Resources of Cape Cod and Southeastern Massachusetts

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has been investigating groundwater and surface-water resources on Cape Cod for more than 50 years. Recent studies have focused on the sources of water to public-supply wells, ponds, streams, and coastal areas; transport and discharge of nitrogen and contaminants of emerging concern derived from domestic and municipal wastewater disposal; fate and transport of...
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MODFLOW-2000 and Management-Optimization Models Used to Evaluate Alternative Groundwater-Withdrawal Scenarios on Water Levels in Kingsbury Pond, Upper Charles River Basin, Eastern Massachusetts

An existing, three-dimensional, transient groundwater-flow model of the Upper Charles River Basin, eastern Massachusetts, was modified to evaluate alternative groundwater-withdrawal scenarios on water levels in Kingsbury Pond. The pond is hydraulically connected to the groundwater-flow system, and water levels in the pond fluctuate in response to recharge to the aquifer from precipitation and wast
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New England Water Science Center

Estimated and measured streamflow and groundwater-level data in the Mississippi Delta

This data release provides the data that support the findings in "Characterizing groundwater and surface-water interaction using hydrograph-separation techniques and groundwater-level data throughout the Mississippi Delta" by Killian and others (2019). There are two child items below: (1) Estimated baseflow includes the baseflow_est data and metadata that contain daily mean streamflow data provid
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Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center

National-Scale Grid to Support Regional Groundwater Availability Studies and a National Hydrogeologic Framework

The National Hydrogeologic Grid (NHG) dataset includes a raster and vector representation of 1-km cells defining a uniform grid that encompasses the continental United States. The value of each cell of the raster dataset corresponds to the 1-km cell number defined as 'cellnum' in the attributes of the vector data. The NHG consists of 4,000 rows and 4,980 columns, numbered from the top left corner
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Water Resources Mission Area, Groundwater and Streamflow Information Program
Filter Total Items: 46

Evaluation of alternative groundwater-withdrawal scenarios on water levels in Kingsbury Pond, upper Charles River Basin, eastern Massachusetts

Kingsbury Pond is a glacial kettle pond in the town of Norfolk, Massachusetts, in the Mill River Basin, which is part of the Upper Charles River Basin in eastern Massachusetts. The pond is hydraulically connected to the surrounding groundwater-flow system, and water levels in the pond fluctuate in response to recharge to the aquifer from precipitation and wastewater return flows through septic sys
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Paul M. Barlow, Paul J. Friesz, Jeffrey R. Barbaro
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Water Resources Mission Area, New England Water Science Center

U.S. Geological Survey Hydrologic Toolbox — A graphical and mapping interface for analysis of hydrologic data

The Hydrologic Toolbox is a Windows-based desktop software program that provides a graphical and mapping interface for analysis of hydrologic time-series data with a set of widely used and standardized computational methods. The software combines the analytical and statistical functionality provided in the U.S. Geological Survey Groundwater and Surface-Water Toolboxes and provides several enhancem
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Paul M. Barlow, Amy R. McHugh, Julie E. Kiang, Tong Zhai, Paul Hummel, Paul Duda, Scott Hinz
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Water Resources Mission Area, New England Water Science Center

GW/SW-MST: A groundwater/surface-water method selection tool

Groundwater/surface-water (GW/SW) exchange and hyporheic processes are topics receiving increasing attention from the hydrologic community. Hydraulic, chemical, temperature, geophysical, and remote sensing methods are used to achieve various goals (e.g., inference of GW/SW exchange, mapping of bed materials, etc.), but the application of these methods is constrained by site conditions such as wate
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Steven Hammett, Frederick Day-Lewis, Brett Russell Trottier, Paul M. Barlow, Martin A. Briggs, Geoffrey N. Delin, Judson Harvey, Carole D. Johnson, John W. Lane, D. O. Rosenberry, Dale D. Werkema
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Water Resources Mission Area

Characterizing groundwater/surface-water interaction using hydrograph-separation techniques and groundwater-level data throughout the Mississippi Delta, USA

The Mississippi Delta, located in northwest Mississippi, is an area dense with industrial-level agriculture sustained by groundwater-dependent irrigation supplied by the Mississippi River Valley Alluvial aquifer (alluvial aquifer). The Delta provides agricultural commodities across the United States and around the world. Observed declines in groundwater altitudes and streamflow contemporaneous wit
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Courtney D. Killian, William H. Asquith, Jeannie R. B. Barlow, Gardner C. Bent, Wade Kress, Paul M. Barlow, Darrel W. Schmitz
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Water Resources Mission Area, Groundwater and Streamflow Information Program, Oklahoma-Texas Water Science Center, New England Water Science Center, Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center

Continuing progress toward a national assessment of water availability and use

Executive SummaryThe Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (Public Law 111—11) was passed into law on March 30, 2009. Subtitle F, also known as the SECURE Water Act, calls for the establishment of a “national water availability and use assessment program” within the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The USGS issued the first report on the program in 2013. Program progress over the period 2013–17
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Eric J. Evenson, Sonya A. Jones, Nancy L. Barber, Paul M. Barlow, David L. Blodgett, Breton W. Bruce, Kyle R. Douglas-Mankin, William H. Farmer, Jeffrey M. Fischer, William B. Hughes, Jonathan Kennen, Julie E. Kiang, Molly A. Maupin, Howard W. Reeves, Gabriel B. Senay, Jennifer S. Stanton, Chad R. Wagner, Jennifer T. Wilson
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Water Resources Mission Area, Water Availability and Use Science Program, Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center

Interstate water management of a “hidden” resource - Physical principles of groundwater hydrology

Groundwater systems are dynamic geologic environments in which water continuously flows from recharge areas to discharge areas at streams, springs, wetlands, coastal waters, and wells. Natural, predevelopment conditions within groundwater systems are changed by the introduction of wells and other human stresses that modify existing groundwater levels, flow paths, and hydrologic budgets. Groundwate
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Paul M. Barlow
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Groundwater and Streamflow Information Program

Capture versus capture zones: Clarifying terminology related to sources of water to wells

The term capture, related to the source of water derived from wells, has been used in two distinct yet related contexts by the hydrologic community. The first is a water‐budget context, in which capture refers to decreases in the rates of groundwater outflow and (or) increases in the rates of recharge along head‐dependent boundaries of an aquifer in response to pumping. The second is a transport c
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Paul M. Barlow, Stanley A. Leake, Michael N. Fienen
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Groundwater and Streamflow Information Program

A tool for efficient, model-independent management optimization under uncertainty

To fill a need for risk-based environmental management optimization, we have developed PESTPP-OPT, a model-independent tool for resource management optimization under uncertainty. PESTPP-OPT solves a sequential linear programming (SLP) problem and also implements (optional) efficient, “on-the-fly” (without user intervention) first-order, second-moment (FOSM) uncertainty techniques to estimate mode
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Jeremy T. White, Michael N. Fienen, Paul M. Barlow, Dave E. Welter
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Water Resources Mission Area, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, Upper Midwest Water Science Center

Depletion mapping and constrained optimization to support managing groundwater extraction

Groundwater models often serve as management tools to evaluate competing water uses including ecosystems, irrigated agriculture, industry, municipal supply, and others. Depletion potential mapping—showing the model-calculated potential impacts that wells have on stream baseflow—can form the basis for multiple potential management approaches in an oversubscribed basin. Specific management approache
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Michael N. Fienen, Kenneth R. Bradbury, Maribeth Kniffin, Paul M. Barlow
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Water Resources Mission Area, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, Upper Midwest Water Science Center

Groundwater flow model for the Little Plover River basin in Wisconsin’s Central Sands

The Little Plover River is a groundwater-fed stream in the sand plains region of central Wisconsin. In this region, sandy sediment deposited during or soon after the last glaciation forms an important unconfined sand and gravel aquifer. This aquifer supplies water for numerous high-capacity irrigation, municipal, and industrial wells that support a thriving agricultural industry. In recent years t
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Ken Bradbury, Michael N. Fienen, Maribeth Kniffin, Jacob Krause, Stephen M. Westenbroek, Andrew T. Leaf, Paul M. Barlow
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Water Resources Mission Area, Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, Upper Midwest Water Science Center

Documentation of a restart option for the U.S. Geological Survey coupled Groundwater and Surface-Water Flow (GSFLOW) model

A new option to write and read antecedent conditions (also referred to as initial conditions) has been developed for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Groundwater and Surface-Water Flow (GSFLOW) numerical, hydrologic simulation code. GSFLOW is an integration of the USGS Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) and USGS Modular Groundwater-Flow Model (MODFLOW), and provides three simulation mode
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R. Steve Regan, Richard G. Niswonger, Steven L. Markstrom, Paul M. Barlow
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Water Resources Mission Area, Groundwater and Streamflow Information Program

U.S. Geological Survey groundwater toolbox, a graphical and mapping interface for analysis of hydrologic data (version 1.0): user guide for estimation of base flow, runoff, and groundwater recharge from streamflow data

This report is a user guide for the streamflow-hydrograph analysis methods provided with version 1.0 of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Groundwater Toolbox computer program. These include six hydrograph-separation methods to determine the groundwater-discharge (base-flow) and surface-runoff components of streamflow—the Base-Flow Index (BFI; Standard and Modified), HYSEP (Fixed Interval, Sliding

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Paul M. Barlow, William L. Cunningham, Tong Zhai, Mark Gray
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Water Resources Mission Area, Groundwater and Streamflow Information Program

U.S. Geological Survey Hydrologic Toolbox version 1.1.0 software archive

This is version 1.1.0 of the Hydrologic Toolbox software.
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New England Water Science Center

U.S. Geological Survey Hydrologic Toolbox Software Archive

This software archive is superseded by Hydrologic Toolbox v1.1.0, available at the following citation: Barlow, P.M., McHugh, A.R., Kiang, J.E., Zhai, T., Hummel, P., Duda, P., and Hinz, S., 2024, U.S. Geological Survey Hydrologic Toolbox version 1.1.0 software archive: U.S. Geological Survey software release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P13VDNAK. The U.S. Geological Survey Hydrologic Toolbox is a Wind
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New England Water Science Center

The Groundwater Toolbox: A Graphical and Mapping Interface for Analysis of Hydrologic Data

The Groundwater Toolbox is a graphical and mapping interface for analysis of hydrologic data. It provides methods to estimate many of the components of the water budget for a hydrologic basin, including precipitation, streamflow, base flow, runoff, groundwater recharge and evapotranspiration. As of May 2022, the Groundwater Toolbox has been superseded by the Hydrologic Toolbox.

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Water Resources Mission Area

GWM: Groundwater Management Process for MODFLOW Using Optimization

GWM is a Groundwater Management Process for the U.S. Geological Survey modular three-dimensional groundwater model, MODFLOW.

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Water Resources Mission Area
Science in Support of Aquatic-Ecosystem Conservation and Restoration

Science in Support of Aquatic-Ecosystem Conservation and Restoration

Human land- and water-management practices have resulted in modifications to natural streamflow conditions and reduced the ecological health of...

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USGS Groundwater Toolbox: A New Way to Analyze Hydrologic Data

USGS Groundwater Toolbox: A New Way to Analyze Hydrologic Data

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has released a convenient and informative new method for the analysis of groundwater and surface-water hydrologic...

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Science and Products

*Disclaimer: Listing outside positions with professional scientific organizations on this Staff Profile are for informational purposes only and do not constitute an endorsement of those professional scientific organizations or their activities by the USGS, Department of the Interior, or U.S. Government