News
Updated as of April 20, 2002.

Study Area
Lots of pictures, maps, and background info on our hydrology, ecology and environment, land and resources uses, and selected sites.

Studies and Surveys
Descriptions of our projects and studies.

Publications and Data

• Publications
• Hydrologic and Chemical Data
• Maps and Geographic (GIS) Data
• Ecological Data

Personnel and Links
Have a question? Talk to us, or find other online locations of Louisiana information.

Site Map
And accessibility features.

For more information on USGS activities in Louisiana and the Nation, please visit the following websites:

NAWQA Home
Louisiana District
Water Resources Division
U.S. Department of the Interior

Copies of publications can be obtained from our office, or some may be available as an Acrobat PDF file. To view these documents, you need the Adobe Acrobat® Reader installed on your computer. A free copy of the Acrobat® Reader may be downloaded from Adobe Systems Incorporated.

• Demcheck, D.K., and Skrobialowski, S.C., 2003, Fipronil and degradation products in the rice-producing areas of the Mermentau River Basin, Louisiana, February-September 2000: U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet FS-010-03, 6 p.
• Demcheck, D.K., and Swarzenski, C.M., 2003, Atrazine in southern Louisiana streams, 1998-2000:  U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet FS-011-03, 6 p.
• Demcheck, D.K., Tollett, R.W., Mize, S.V., Skrobialowski, S.C., Fendick, R.B., Jr., Swarzenski, C.M., and Porter, Stephen, 2004, Water Quality in the Acadian-Pontchartrain Drainages, Louisiana and Mississippi, 1999-2001: U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1232, 41 p. 
• Skrobialowski, S.C., 2002, Trace elements and organic compounds in bed sediment from selected streams in southern Louisiana, 1998: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 02-4089, 39 p. 
• Tollett, R.W., Fendick, R.B., Jr.,and Lane B. Simmons, 2003, Quality of water in domestic wells in the Chicot and Chicot equivalent aquifer systems in southern Louisiana and southwestern Mississippi, 2000-2001: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 03-4122, 85 p.

Check this space often for updates on publications. As publications and data are produced, they can be found at this website, or on the Louisiana District's publications webpage. Additional water-quality reports can be found at the National NAWQA publications webpage.

Hydrologic data and chemical constituents from our water-quality, bed-sediment, and fish-tissue studies are available each summer in our District's Annual Report, which can be obtained from our office. Our surface- and groundwater data can be found in the Annual Reports for 1999, 2000, and 2001. Bed sediment and fish tissue data have been published in the 2001 Annual Report. These publications will shortly be available through the Louisiana District's Publications Webpage.

Data for Louisiana and the rest of the nation can also be obtained through NWISWeb, which is a web-accessible form for the USGS's National Water Information System (NWIS). This webpage allows you to search for real-time and historical data for surface-water sites, groundwater wells, water quality, as well as site information. NWISWeb and other hydrologic data sources for Louisiana can be found on the Louisiana Hydrowatch webpage. For other data requests or general information, contact Dennis Demcheck [ddemchec@usgs.gov].

We are in the process of producing a data file of basin boundaries for all our surface water sites. These boundaries were developed from 24K quad topographic maps. New basins are currently being added, after which this dataset will be available in Arc shapefile(.shp) and export (.e00) format.

A free viewer (ArcExplorer) for data in Arc shapefile and many other formats is available from ESRI, which allows you to layer several data themes, zoom and change your layout, and query the data. The Louisiana Atlas website has lots of free geographic data for Louisiana, covering themes such as elevation, political boundaries, census data, soils, hydrology, geology, roads, public land survey (township, range, section), natural areas (parks, forests, refuges, wildlife management areas), and much more.

Algae and invertebrates were collected in 1999 as part of the survey of Fixed Surface-water Sites, and again in 2001 as part of the Mermentau Basin Water-quality and Ecology Study. Samples are being identified at our central lab.

Fish were also collected in the fall of 1999 to characterize their communities. Sizes, weights, and abundance were collected in addition to species identification, and will be published in a future report. Here are tables (in text format) of species found at each site, scientific and common names:

• Tchefuncte River near Covington (25 species)
• Dawson Cr. at Bluebonnet Blvd., Baton Rouge (14 species)
• Bayou Grosse Tete at Rosedale (20 species)
• Bayou Boeuf at Amelia (21 species)
• Bayou des Cannes near Eunice (13 species)
• Mermentau River at Mermentau (33 species)
• Bayou Lacassine near Lake Arthur (22 species)
• Whiskey Chitto Cr. near Oberlin (27 species)