Urban Water-Quality Issues Addressed through Multiple Studies

A major emphasis of the NAWQA program is to understand relations between urban land use and water quality. Specifically, the goal is to describe biological, chemical, and physical characteristics of urban water resources over time, and relate those characteristics to natural processes and human activities that control the movement and quality of water within and among urban watersheds. The intended outcome is an improved scientific basis for decision makers to protect urban waters in varying geographic and environmental settings across the Nation, and to manage and prioritize competing demands, such as for safe drinking water, aquatic ecosystem health, native and endangered species preservation, and recreation in urban areas. NAWQA does not address urban issues with one network. The program uses a collection of networks and studies that are each designed with specific questions, that together help to accomplish the overall goal.

NAWQA Programs with an urban focus:

National Topical Studies

• Effects of Urbanization on Stream Ecosystems (EUSE) addresses the magnitude and pattern of response in stream hydrology, habitat, water chemistry, and biological communities as watersheds are urbanized in 11 metropolitan areas.
  
• Transport of Anthropogenic and Natural Contaminants to Public Supply Wells (TANC) provides local and regional-scale vulnerability assessments of public supply wells affected by contamination from multiple sources, including urban.
• Mercury in Stream Ecosystems addresses the questions of what are the concentrations of mercury in water, sediment, and fish; and how do biological, chemical, and other environmental characteristics govern the methylation, transport, and bioaccumulation of mercury in undeveloped and urban streams in 3 metropolitan areas.

  National- and regional-scale assessments

• Pesticides in urban streams (water, bed sediment, fish tissue) and shallow ground water.
  
• Nutrients in urban streams and shallow ground water.
  
• Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in urban streams and shallow ground water.
  
• Trace elements in bed sediments, fish tissue, and ground water in urbanized areas.
• Ecology sampling studies that assess health of fish, invertebrate, algal communities, and riparian habitat.

  Special Studies
  

• Parking Lot Sealcoats: A Major Source of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Urban and Suburban Environments is a collaborative study with the City of Austin, Texas.
• Contaminant Trends in Lake Sediments (CTLS) uses sediment-core analyses to evaluate trends over time of persistent urban contaminants, such as trace elements, DDT, PCBs, chlordane, and PAHs in reservoirs and lakes in 42 metropolitan areas.

All USGS NAWQA Publications Dealing with Urban Areas:
Urban NAWQA Publications List

Data for various studies is found at:
The NAWQA data warehouse