Water Resources Programs

State and Regional — The USGS manages water information at offices located throughout the United States. Although all offices are tied together through a Nation-wide computer network, each collects data and conducts studies in a particular area. Local information is best found at these sites.

USGS Programs Managed by the Water Resources Discipline

• Cooperative Water Program — The Cooperative Program, a partnership between the USGS and State and local agencies, provides information that forms the foundation for many of the Nation's water-resources management and planning activities.
• National Streamflow Information Program (NSIP) — The National Streamflow Information Program (NSIP) is a conceptual plan developed by the USGS for a new approach to the acquisition and delivery of streamflow information.
• National Water Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA) — 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. The goal is to develop long-term consistent and comparable information on streams, ground water, and aquatic ecosystems to support sound management and policy decisions. The NAWQA program is designed to answer these questions:
  1. What is the condition of our Nation's streams and ground water?
  2. How are these conditions changing over time?
  3. How do natural features and human activities affect these conditions?
• Toxic Substances Hydrology (Toxics) Program — Provides unbiased earth science information on the behavior of toxic substances in the Nation's hydrologic environments. The information is used to avoid human exposure, to develop effective cleanup strategies, and to prevent further contamination.
• Ground Water Resources Program — The Ground-Water Resources Program encompasses regional studies of ground-water systems, multidisciplinary studies of critical ground-water issues, access to ground-water data, and research and methods development. The program provides unbiased scientific information and many of the tools that are used by Federal, State, and local management and regulatory agencies to make important decisions about the Nation's ground-water resources.
• Hydrologic Research and Development — conducts basic and problem oriented hydrologic research in support of the mission of the USGS. The program is designed to encourage pursuit of a diverse agenda of research topics aimed at providing new knowledge and insights into varied and complex hydrologic processes that are not well understood.
• State Water Resources Research Institute Program — A matching grant program to support water resources research, education, and information transfer at the 54 university based Water Resources Research Institutes. This program includes the National Institutes for Water Resources USGS Student Internship Program.
• Hydrologic Networks and Analysis (HNA) — The USGS's Hydrologic Network and Analysis Program, often called the Collection of Basic Record (CBR) Program, is a direct appropriation from Congress.

SubPrograms

• Water Information Coordination Program (WICP) — Ensures the availability of water information required for effective decisionmaking for natural resources management and environmental protection and to do it cost effectively.
• Drinking-Water Research Topics — The wide range of monitoring, assessment, and research activities conducted by the USGS to help understand and protect the quality of our drinking-water resources is described on these pages. These studies are often done in collaboration with other Federal, State, Tribal, and local agencies.
• National Stream Quality Accounting Network (NASQAN) — Focus is on monitoring the water quality of four of the Nation's largest river systems—the Mississippi (including the Missouri and Ohio), the Columbia, the Colorado, and the Rio Grande.
• Hydrologic Benchmark Network (HBN) — was established in 1963 to provide long-term measurements of streamflow and water quality in areas that are minimally affected by human activities. These data were to be used to study time trends and to serve as controls for separating natural from artificial changes in other streams. The network has consisted of as many as 58 drainage basins in 39 States.
• National Atmospheric Deposition Program/National Trends Network (NADP/NTN) — A nationwide network of precipitation monitoring sites. The first sites in the network were established in 1978. The network currently consists of approximately 200 sites.
• National Water Summary Program — a series pf publications designed to increase public understanding of the nature, geographic distribution, magnitude, and trends of the Nation's water resources. It often is referred to as the USGS "encyclopedia of water."
• National Water-Use Program — examines the withdrawal, use, and return flow of water on local, state, and national levels.
• USGS Environmental Affairs Program — provides guidance and information on the National Environmental Policy Act and other environmental issues.
• Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical Budgets (WEBB) — understands the processes controlling water, energy, and biogeochemical fluxes over a range of temporal and spatial scales and to understand the interactions of these processes, including the effect of atmospheric and climatic variables.
• National Irrigation Water Quality Program — A Department of Interior program to identify and address irrigation-induced water quality and contamination problems related to Department of Interior water projects in the west.

International Programs

• Index of International Water Projects
• Global Drainage Basins Program (database) — Currently at the EROS Data Center, UNEP, NASA, and the USGS are developing continental drainage basins from the 30 arc second (~1-km) digital elevation models (DEM). The goals of the project are two-fold. The first goal is to produce the most realistic, verified drainage basins from the DEM. The second goal is to compare the drainage areas from the 30 arec second (~1-km) source to existing basin sources. A comparative analysis of what drainage source produces the best physical boundary will benefit researchers, scientists, and individuals that use hydrological feature data for modeling, calculating, and assessing environmental problems.