Sandra Eberts is the Program Science Coordinator for the USGS Water Resources Mission Area, Office of Planning and Programming (OPP). One of her primary responsibilities is to engage regional and national-level stakeholders to cultivate opportunity for USGS science to meet their needs and to create excitement for USGS products long before their planned release. Sandy is the USGS representative to the Source Water Collaborative—27 national organizations united to protect America's sources of drinking water. She is a member of the American Water Works Association Groundwater Committee, the International Joint Commission Science Advisory Board - Research Coordination Committee, the Great Lakes Coordinating Committee Executive Support Group and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement Annex 4 Objectives and Targets Task Team. In addition, Sandy is the USGS Co-Chair for the Advisory Committee on Water Information Subcommittee on Hydrology - Streamflow Information Collaborative Workgroup.
Sandy is a Professional Hydrogeologist. She holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Geology from The Ohio State University and a Certificate in Legislative Studies from Georgetown University. She has been with the USGS for more than 30 years. She began her career as a groundwater hydrologist and has experience developing and leading multidisciplinary scientific program at the regional and national level.
The USGS Groundwater and Streamflow Information Program supports the collection and (or) delivery of both streamflow and water-level information for more than 8,500 sites and water-level information alone for more than 1,700 additional sites. The data are served online—most in near realtime—to meet many diverse needs.
Get the facts and figures about the USGS Streamgaging Network, one of the largest streamgaging enterprises in the world!
More than 100 million people in the United States—about 35 percent of the population—receive their drinking water from public-supply wells. These systems can be vulnerable to contamination from naturally occurring constituents, such as radon, uranium and arsenic, and from commonly used manmade chemicals, such as fertilizers, pesticides, solvents, and gasoline hydrocarbons. Learn about the...
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists studying the vulnerability of public-supply wells to contamination have identified ways in which the seasonal operation of public-supply wells can affect the quality of water that they produce. By incorporating historical water-quality data into models of fluid flow, USGS scientists were able to estimate the amount of contaminated groundwater reaching a...
The challenges of providing safe and sustainable water supplies for human and ecological uses and protecting lives and property during water emergencies are well recognized. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) plays an essential role in meeting these challenges through its observational networks and renowned water science and research activities (...
Eberts, Sandra M.; Wagner, Chad R.; Woodside, Michael D.
In the late 1800s, John Wesley Powell, second Director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), proposed gaging the flow of rivers and streams in the Western United States to evaluate the potential for irrigation. Around the same time, several cities in the Eastern United States established primitive streamgages to help design water-supply systems....
Eberts, Sandra M.; Woodside, Michael D.; Landers, Mark N.; Wagner, Chad R.
Intense demand for water in the Central Valley of California and related increases in groundwater nitrate concentration threaten the sustainability of the groundwater resource. To assess contamination risk in the region, we developed a hybrid, non-linear, machine learning model within a statistical learning framework to predict nitrate...
Ransom, Katherine M.; Nolan, Bernard T.; Traum, Jonathan A.; Faunt, Claudia C.; Bell, Andrew M.; Gronberg, Jo Ann M.; Wheeler, David C.; Zamora, Celia; Jurgens, Bryant C.; Schwarz, Gregory E.; Belitz, Kenneth; Eberts, Sandra M.; Kourakos, George; Harter, Thomas No abstract available.
Muenich, Rebecca Logsdon; Johnson, Laura; Bratton, John F.; Fussell, Kristin DeVanna; Kane, Doug; Kalcic, Margaret; Robertson, Dale M.; Eberts, Sandra M.; Evans, Mary Anne; Gibbons, Kenneth J.
Cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (CyanoHABs) are increasingly a global concern because CyanoHABs pose a threat to human and aquatic ecosystem health and cause economic damages. Despite advances in scientific understanding of cyanobacteria and associated compounds, many unanswered questions remain about occurrence, environmental triggers for...
Graham, Jennifer L.; Dubrovsky, Neil M.; Eberts, Sandra M. The age distribution of water from a public-supply well in a deep alluvial aquifer was estimated and used to help explain arsenic variability in the water. The age distribution was computed using a ternary mixing model that combines three lumped parameter models of advection-dispersion transport of environmental tracers, which represent relatively...
Jurgens, Bryant C.; Bexfield, Laura M.; Eberts, Sandra M. No abstract available.
Böhlke, John Karl; Jurgens, Bryant C.; Uselmann, David J.; Eberts, Sandra M. No abstract available.
Eberts, Sandra M. Aquifer vulnerability models were developed to map groundwater nitrate concentration at domestic and public-supply well depths in the Central Valley, California. We compared three modeling methods for ability to predict nitrate concentration >4 mg/L: logistic regression (LR), random forest classification (RFC), and random forest regression (RFR...
Nolan, Bernard T.; Gronberg, JoAnn M.; Faunt, Claudia C.; Eberts, Sandra M.; Belitz, Ken
As part of the U.S. Geological Survey National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program, a study was conducted from 2001 to 2011 to shed light on factors that affect the vulnerability of water from public-supply wells to contamination (referred to hereafter as “public-supply-well vulnerability”). The study was designed as a follow-up to earlier...
Eberts, Sandra M.; Thomas, Mary Ann; Jagucki, Martha L.
This fact sheet highlights findings from the vulnerability study of a public-supply well in Albuquerque, New Mexico (hereafter referred to as “the study well”). The study well produces about 3,000 gallons of water per minute from the Rio Grande aquifer system. Water samples were collected at the study well, at two other nearby public-supply wells...
Jagucki, Martha L.; Bexfield, Laura M.; Heywood, Charles E.; Eberts, Sandra M.
TracerLPM is an interactive Excel® (2007 or later) workbook program for evaluating groundwater age distributions from environmental tracer data by using lumped parameter models (LPMs). Lumped parameter models are mathematical models of transport based on simplified aquifer geometry and flow configurations that account for effects of...
Jurgens, Bryant C.; Böhlke, J.K.; Eberts, Sandra M.
The USGS Groundwater Age Mixtures and Contaminant Trends Tool (GAMACTT) can be used to explore the effects of basic aquifer properties and well configurations on groundwater age mixtures in groundwater discharge and on contaminant trends from varying nonpoint-source contaminant input scenarios.