Southern Florida National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program

Project Investigator: Benjamin F. McPherson Project Start Date: 1996 End Date: -- Data Publications Related Links

Summary

The goal of this project is to develop long-term consistent and comparable information on streams, ground water, and aquatic ecosystems to support sound management and policy decisions.

NAWQA is designed to assess historical, current, and future water-quality conditions in representative river basins and aquifers nationwide. One of the primary objectives of the program is to describe relations between natural factors, human activities, and water-quality conditions and to define those factors that most affect water quality in different parts of the Nation. The linkage of water quality to environmental processes is of fundamental importance to water-resource managers, planners, and policy makers. It provides a strong and unbiased basis for better decisionmaking by those responsible for making decisions that affect our water resources, including the United States Congress, Federal, State, and local agencies, environmental groups, and industry. Information from the NAWQA Program also will be useful for guiding research, monitoring, and regulatory activities in cost effective ways.

Since 1991, USGS scientists with the NAWQA program have been collecting and analyzing data and information in more than 50 major river basins and aquifers across the Nation. Together, these areas account for 60 to 70 percent of the Nation's water use and population served by public water supplies and cover about one-half of the land area of the Nation. Investigations of these areas, referred to as study units, are the principal building blocks of the NAWQA Program.

Data

• Sites Listing for South Florida (tab-delimited text or .xls)
• Water-Quality Data (available from the Water Resources of Florida website)

Publications

Circulars

• The South Florida Environment - A Region Under Stress (Circular 1134)
• Water Quality in Southern Florida, 1996-98 (Circular 1207)

Fact Sheets

• National Water-Quality Assessment Program: Study design for data collection in the southern Florida study unit, 1996-98 (available from the Water Resources of Florida website)
• Organochlorine pesticides and PCBs in southern Florida fishes: Then and now (available from the Water Resources of Florida website)
• Southern Florida NAWQA Program Study Unit Fact Sheet (available from the Water Resources of Florida website)
• Water-Quality Assessment of Southern Florida-Wastewater Discharges and Runoff (available from the Water Resources of Florida website)

Posters

• The National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program (presented at the South Florida Restoration Science Forum, May 1999)

Water Resources Investigations Reports

• Water quality in the southern Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp in the vicinity of the Tamiami Trail, 1996-97 (available from the Water Resources of Florida website)

Related Links

• National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program
• Southern Florida National Water-Quality Assessment Program
• USGS National Water Quality Assessment Data Warehouse