Of Interest...

With The Click Of A Mouse, Estimated Streamflow Statistics For Ohio.

2/8/2013 -- Ohio StreamStats makes estimating streamflow statistics and computing watershed characteristics for ungaged sites faster, easier, and more reproducible than was possible with previously used manual methods. To address the needs for estimating selected low-flow statistics at ungaged locations, Ohio StreamStats has been enhanced as described in a new report. Ohio StreamStats users can now estimate a variety of low-flow statistics in addition to the peak flow, mean annual flow, mean monthly flow, and selected flow-duration statistics that previously were available. StreamStats has an assortment of analytical tools that are useful for water-resources planning and management.

The Silver Jackets - An Ongoing National Flood Response.

2/4/2013 -- The Silver Jacket teams of Ohio and Indiana, with support of the Midwest Regional Climate Center, have launched a Silver Jackets "Flood of 1913" website. The site is packed with historical information on the storm, as well as current-day tips on flood preparedness, mitigation, and more.

Public outcry after the landmark flood of 1913 event helped drive the creation of many of the Federal, state, and local flood prevention and education efforts we rely on today. In the spirit of collaboration, the Silver Jackets program assembles teams of local, state, and Federal agencies, including the USGS, to work on state-initiated flood preparedness, warning, and response projects.
 

New Report Compares Filtration Methods For Concentrating Microorganisms In Lake Water.

1/25/2013 -- To evaluate public health risk and to make bathing-beach closure and advisory decisions, indicator bacteria, such as E. coli, are used. Beaches are seldom monitored for the pathogens themselves.  To better ascertain the occurrence of pathogens at beaches, the USGS and EPA collaborated on a  study of methods that can simultaneously filter and concentrate pathogens in lake-water samples.  The study concluded that different filtration methods worked best for individual microorganisms; however, the automatic ultrafiltration method resulted in the highest recovery while maintaining low variability for the nine microorganisms studied.  This method was used to demonstrate that filtration can be scaled up to the collection of 200-liter lake-water samples.  Results from the study are being published as “Comparison of filters for concentrating microbial indicators and pathogens in lake-water samples,” a report that will appear in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology in March 2013 (vol. 79, issue 4) and is available ahead of print.

Where Were the Year’s Floods?

1/4/2013 -- Use WaterWatch to quickly build an animated interactive map  showing real-time streamflow or floods in the United States from 2003 to present. Was it really a dry summer in the Midwest? Where were the spring floods? WaterWatch is a USGS Web site that displays maps, graphs, and tables describing real-time, recent, and past streamflow conditions for the United States.

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