Timothy K Cowdery (Former Employee)

The USGS has partnered with the Fond du Lac Band in monitoring and investigations since 2006 to collect, interpret and publish information needed to manage water levels and restore wetlands for wild rice production. Initial work included a streamgage and a report describing aquifer properties. New investigations include groundwater and surface-water modelling of the St Louis River Basin.

Groundwater is an important water resource. The USGS collects information on the quality and quantity of groundwater and conducts advanced modeling of groundwater flow and groundwater/surface-water systems. The USGS also evaluates the effects of water-use, land-use, and climate change on groundwater, surface-water, and the ecosystems that rely on them.

Resource managers can use assessments of past and future land use to make science-based decisions. This project characterizes how changes in land use can change groundwater and surface-water flows in the St. Louis River Basin, MN. The USGS is constructing a set of groundwater models to simulate groundwater/surface-water interactions and evaluate how water flows have changed.

This project monitors groundwater level, groundwater temperature and precipitation at hourly intervals at a long-term network of sites throughout Minnesota. These data are collected from surficial and buried aquifers and can be used to estimate groundwater recharge and assist water-availability assessments. Data are corrected to manual measurements at least twice per year and are available through...