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USGS1990

Water-resources activities of the U.S. Geological Survey

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has been active in West Virginia since the early 1900's. During recent years, the District completed several investigations as well as initiated others. An intense effort has been made to publish interpretive reports and data on a near-current basis. As a result of this effort, a significant number of water resources reports were completed and/or published during the 1989 fiscal year. This report contains a complete list of USGS reports addressing West Virginia hydrology as of December 1989. The mission of the Water Resources Division is to provide the hydrologic information and understanding needed for the optimum utilization and management of the Nation 's water resources for the overall benefit of the people in the United States. This is accomplished, in large part , through cooperation with other Federal and non-Federal agencies, by: (1) Collecting, on a systematic basis, data needed for the continuing determination and evaluation of the quantity, quality, and use of the Nation 's water resources; (2) Conducting analytical and interpretive water resource appraisals describing the occurrence, availability, and the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of surface and groundwater; (3) conducting supportive basic and problem-oriented research in hydraulics, hydrology, and related fields of science to improve the scientific basis for investigations and measurement techniques and to understand hydrologic systems sufficiently well to quantitatively predict their response to stress, either natural or manmade; (4) disseminating the water data and the results of these investigations and research through reports, maps, computerized information services, and other forms of public releases; (5) Coordinating the activities of Federal agencies in the acquisition of water data for streams, lakes, reservoirs, estuaries, and groundwaters; and (6) Providing scientific and technical assistance in hydrologic fields to other Federal, State and local agencies, to licensees of the Federal Power Commission, and to international agencies on behalf of the Department of State. (Lantz-PTT)

Open-File Report↗
USGS2013

Integrating Federal and State data records to report progress in establishing agricultural conservation practices on Chesapeake Bay farms

In response to the Executive Order for Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration (E.O. #13508, May 12, 2009), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) took on the task of acquiring and assessing agricultural conservation practice data records for U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs, and transferred those datasets in aggregated format to State jurisdictional agencies for use in reporting conservation progress to the Chesapeake Bay Program Partnership (CBP Partnership). Under the guidelines and regulations that have been developed to protect and restore water-quality in the Chesapeake Bay, the six State jurisdictions that fall within the Chesapeake Bay watershed are required to report their progress in promoting agricultural conservation practices to the CBP Partnership on an annual basis. The installation and adoption of agricultural best management practices is supported by technical and financial assistance from both Federal and State conservation programs. The farm enrollment data for USDA conservation programs are confidential, but agencies can obtain access to the privacy-protected data if they are established as USDA Conservation Cooperators. The datasets can also be released to the public if they are first aggregated to protect farmer privacy. In 2012, the USGS used its Conservation Cooperator status to obtain implementation data for conservation programs sponsored by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) for farms within the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Three jurisdictions (Delaware, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia) used the USGS-provided aggregated dataset to report conservation progress in 2012, whereas the remaining three jurisdictions (Maryland, New York, and Virginia) used jurisdictional Conservation Cooperator Agreements to obtain privacy-protected data directly from the USDA. This report reviews the status of conservation data sharing between the USDA and the various jurisdictions, discusses the methods that were used by the USGS in 2012 to collect and process USDA agricultural conservation data, and also documents methods that were used by the jurisdictions to integrate Federal and State data records, reduce double counting, and provide an accurate reporting of conservation practices to the CBP Partnership’s Annual Progress Review. A similar tracking, reporting, and assessment will occur in future years, as State and Federal governments and nongovernmental organizations continue to work with farmers and conservation districts to reduce the impacts of agriculture on water-quality.

Delaware; Maryland; New York; Pennsylvania;Virgini↗
USGS2003

Heat as a tool for studying the movement of ground water near streams

Stream temperature has long been recognized as an important water quality parameter. Temperature plays a key role in the health of a stream’s aquatic life, both in the water column and in the benthic habitat of streambed sediments. Many fish are sensitive to temperature. For example, anadromous salmon require specific temperature ranges to successfully develop, migrate, and spawn [see Halupka and others, 2000]. Metabolic rates, oxygen requirements and availability, predation patterns, and susceptibility of organisms to contaminants are but a few of the many environmental responses regulated by temperature. Hydrologists traditionally treated streams and ground water as distinct, independent resources to be utilized and managed separately. With increasing demands on water supplies, however, hydrologists realized that streams and ground water are parts of a single, interconnected resource [see Winter and others, 1998]. Attempts to distinguish these resources for analytical or regulatory purposes are fraught with difficulty because each domain can supply (or drain) the other, with attendant possibilities for contamination exchange. Sustained depletion of one resource usually results in depletion of the other, propagating adverse effects within the watershed. An understanding of the interconnections between surface water and ground water is therefore essential. This understanding is still incomplete, but receiving growing attention from the research community. Exchanges between streams and shallow ground-water systems play a key role in controlling temperatures not only in streams, but also in their underlying sediments. As a result, analyses of subsurface temperature patterns provide information about surface-water/ground-water interactions. Chemical tracers are commonly used for tracing flow between streams and ground water. Introduction of chemical tracers in near-stream environments is, however, limited by real and perceived issues regarding introduced contamination and practical constraints. As an alternative, naturally occurring variations in temperature can be used to track (or trace) the heat carried by flowing water. The hydraulic transport of heat enables its use as a tracer. Differences between temperatures in the stream and surrounding sediments are now being analyzed to trace the movement of ground water to and from streams. As shown in the subsequent chapters of this circular, tracing the transport of heat leads to a better understanding of the magnitudes and mechanisms of stream/ground-water exchanges, and helps quantify the resulting effects on stream and streambed temperatures. Chapter 1 describes the general principals and procedures by which the natural transport of heat can be utilized to infer the movement of subsurface water near streams. This information sets the foundation for understanding the advanced applications in chapters 2 through 8. Each of these chapters provides a case study, using heat tracing as a tool, of interactions between surface water and ground water for a different location in the western United States. Technical details of the use of heat as an environmental tracer appear in appendices.

Circular↗
USGS1883

Geology of Wisconsin: Survey of 1873-1879, Volume I

The leading purpose df this volume was determined by the following enactment, being section 1, chapter 121, of the Laws of 1876. " The people of the State of Wisconsin, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows: Section 1. That in the preparation of his final report, the chief geologist be, and he is hereby authorized to collate the general geology and the leading facts and principles relating to the material resources of the State, together with practical suggestions as to the methods of detecting and utilizing the same, so as to constitute the material for a volume suited to the wants of explorers, miners, land owners, and manufacturers, who use crude native products, and to the needs of the schools of the State, and the masses of intelligent people who are not familiar with the principles of geology; said volume to be written in clear, plain language, with explanations of technical terms, and to be properly illustrated with maps and diagrams, and to be so arranged as to constitute a key to the more perfect understanding of the whole report." To subserve the purposes thus legally defined, the volume will be found to consist of three distinct portions; Part I, embracing the General Geology of the State, with explanatory matter; Part II, consisting of lists of the minerals, rocks and life-products of the State, with descriptions and auxiliary discussions; and Part III, embracing industrial descriptions and practical suggestions with reference to the leading natural resources of the State.

Wisconsin↗
USGS2001

Data Model and Relational Database Design for Highway Runoff Water-Quality Metadata

A National highway and urban runoff waterquality metadatabase was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration as part of the National Highway Runoff Water-Quality Data and Methodology Synthesis (NDAMS). The database was designed to catalog available literature and to document results of the synthesis in a format that would facilitate current and future research on highway and urban runoff. This report documents the design and implementation of the NDAMS relational database, which was designed to provide a catalog of available information and the results of an assessment of the available data. All the citations and the metadata collected during the review process are presented in a stratified metadatabase that contains citations for relevant publications, abstracts (or previa), and reportreview metadata for a sample of selected reports that document results of runoff quality investigations. The database is referred to as a metadatabase because it contains information about available data sets rather than a record of the original data. The database contains the metadata needed to evaluate and characterize how valid, current, complete, comparable, and technically defensible published and available information may be when evaluated for application to the different dataquality objectives as defined by decision makers. This database is a relational database, in that all information is ultimately linked to a given citation in the catalog of available reports. The main database file contains 86 tables consisting of 29 data tables, 11 association tables, and 46 domain tables. The data tables all link to a particular citation, and each data table is focused on one aspect of the information collected in the literature search and the evaluation of available information. This database is implemented in the Microsoft (MS) Access database software because it is widely used within and outside of government and is familiar to many existing and potential customers. The stratified metadatabase design for the NDAMS program is presented in the MS Access file DBDESIGN.mdb and documented with a data dictionary in the NDAMS_DD.mdb file recorded on the CD-ROM. The data dictionary file includes complete documentation of the table names, table descriptions, and information about each of the 419 fields in the database.

Open-File Report↗
USGS2006

Assessment of Appalachian basin oil and gas resources: Devonian shale— Middle and Upper Paleozoic Total Petroleum System

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently completed an assessment of the technically recoverable undiscovered hydrocarbon resources of the Appalachian Basin Province. The assessment province includes parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. The assessment was based on six major petroleum systems, which include strata that range in age from Cambrian to Pennsylvanian. The Devonian Shale-Middle and Upper Paleozoic Total Petroleum System (TPS) extends generally from New York to Tennessee. This petroleum system has produced a large proportion of the oil and natural gas that has been discovered in the Appalachian basin since the drilling of the Drake well in Pennsylvania in 1859. For assessment purposes, the TPS was divided into 10 assessment units (plays), 4 of which were classified as conventional and 6 as continuous. The results were reported as fully risked fractiles (F95, F50, F5 and the Mean), with the fractiles indicating the probability of recovery of the assessment amount. Products reported were oil (millions of barrels of oil, MMBO), gas (billions of cubic feet of gas, BCFG), and natural gas liquids (millions of barrels of natural gas liquids, MMBNGL). The mean estimates for technically recoverable undiscovered hydrocarbons in the TPS are: 7.53 MMBO, 31,418.88 BCFG (31.42 trillion cubic feet) of gas, and 562.07 MMBNGL.

Appalachian Basin oil and gas resources↗
USGS2013

Metallogenic belt and mineral deposit maps of northeast Asia

This report contains explanatory material and summary tables for lode mineral deposits and placer districts (Map A, sheet 1) and metallogenic belts of Northeast Asia (Maps B, C, and D on sheets 2, 3, and 4, respectively). The map region includes eastern Siberia, southeastern Russia, Mongolia, northeast China, and Japan. A large group of geologists—members of the joint international project, Major Mineral Deposits, Metallogenesis, and Tectonics of Northeast Asia—prepared the maps, tables, and introductory text. This is a cooperative project with the Russian Academy of Sciences, Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Mongolian National University, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolian Technical University, Mineral Resources Authority of Mongolia, Geological Research Institute, Jilin University, China Geological Survey, Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, Geological Survey of Japan, and U.S. Geological Survey. This report is one of a series of reports on the mineral resources, geodynamics, and metallogenesis of Northeast Asia. Companion studies include (1) a detailed geodynamics map of Northeast Asia (Parfenov and others, 2003); (2) a compilation of major mineral deposit models (Rodionov and Nokleberg, 2000; Rodionov and others, 2000); (3) a series of metallogenic belt maps (Obolenskiy and others, 2004); (4) location map of lode mineral deposits and placer districts of Northeast Asia (Ariunbileg and others, 2003b); (5) descriptions of metallogenic belts (Rodionov and others, 2004); (6) a database on significant metalliferous and selected nonmetalliferous lode deposits and selected placer districts (Ariunbileg and others, 2003a); and (7) a series of summary project publications (Ariunbileg and 74 others, 2003b).

Asia↗
USGS2021

Technical note—Relative variability of selected turbidity standards and sensors in use by the U.S. Geological Survey

The challenges associated with field measurements of turbidity are well known and result primarily from differences in reported values that depend on instrument design and the resulting need for reporting units that are specific to those designs. A critical challenge for making comparable turbidity measurements is the selection and use of appropriate turbidity standards for sensor calibration. The accepted primary standards for turbidity measurements use formazin made from scratch; all others should relate back to readings obtained using standard formazin. However, because turbidity is a qualitative property of water, comparing standards is not as simple as it is for many chemical measurements. The U.S. Geological Survey “National Field Manual for the Collection of Water-Quality Data” currently allows for the use of two standards, formazin and polymer beads, for the calibration of field turbidimeters. Another challenge for making comparable turbidity measurements is selection of turbidity sensors. A turbidity sensor commonly used in the U.S. Geological Survey, the Yellow Springs Instruments (YSI) 6136, has been replaced by the manufacturer with the YSI EXO turbidity sensor. Both sensors operate on the same principles but have slight design differences that result in readings that are not directly comparable on a 1:1 basis. Differences in calibration standards and sensors are a cause of concern in ongoing studies that require switching calibration standards or sensor types, and for comparisons of data collected with sensors calibrated by using different calibration standards, different sensor types, or both. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the response of two YSI turbidity sensors in both formazin-based standards (StablCal) and polymer turbidity standards (in this case YSI brand; however, other brands are available) and to compare the performance of the YSI EXO and YSI 6136 turbidity sensors under similar laboratory and environmental (field) conditions. To quantify these differences, a series of laboratory and field side-by-side comparisons were conducted. Nine field comparisons of YSI EXO and YSI 6136 sensors were performed at site locations in Kansas and Virginia. Two field comparisons of StablCal and polymer calibration standards were performed in Kansas, both using YSI EXO turbidity sensors. Five laboratory comparisons between the YSI EXO and YSI 6136 turbidity sensors were performed, and seven laboratory comparisons between StablCal and polymer turbidity standards were performed using YSI EXO turbidity sensors. The results can help the USGS and others better understand how turbidity data can differ depending on the sensors and calibration standards used. Key findings and conclusions include the following— Regardless of the comparison, strong linear associations were typically found across all measures of turbidity under field and laboratory conditions, but linear associations were not necessarily 1:1 and varied by type of standard, type of sensor, and field and laboratory conditions. The mean relative percentage differences for all but a few comparisons were greater than 10 percent but less than 30 percent. However, differences were inconsistent across the laboratory and field conditions measured in this study, precluding the ability to formulate definitive statements of consistent directional bias depending on the type of standard or sensor used. Across all tests and a range of 0 to 1,000 formazin nephelometric units (FNU), no consistent bias between the YSI EXO and YSI 6136 turbidity sensors was observed, but either regression relations were near 1:1 or the YSI EXO turbidity readings were lower than those measured with the YSI 6136. Relative percentage differences typically exceeded the 10- and 30-percent benchmarks. However, most (about 95 percent) of the absolute differences between turbidity values measured with the YSI EXO and those measured with the YSI 6136 sensors were less than 20 FNU. In laboratory experiments, when turbidity was “constant,” the absolute difference between YSI EXO and YSI 6136-measured turbidity values ranged from near 0 FNU to nearly 400 FNU (over a range of 0 to 1,000 FNU). Substantial variability in turbidity measurements makes comparison between standards and sensor types challenging. Given the inherent variability in turbidity measurements and the lack of consistent bias between calibration standards or sensors, changing methods during an ongoing study would compromise the comparability of the data. The effect of changing methods ultimately depends on study objectives. If method changes are required, laboratory- and field-based comparisons across a range of conditions ideally would be conducted to determine whether site-specific biases can be identified.

Open-File Report↗
USGS2003

Information technology challenges of biodiversity and ecosystems informatics

Computer scientists, biologists, and natural resource managers recently met to examine the prospects for advancing computer science and information technology research by focusing on the complex and often-unique challenges found in the biodiversity and ecosystem domain. The workshop and its final report reveal that the biodiversity and ecosystem sciences are fundamentally information sciences and often address problems having distinctive attributes of scale and socio-technical complexity. The paper provides an overview of the emerging field of biodiversity and ecosystem informatics and demonstrates how the demands of biodiversity and ecosystem research can advance our understanding and use of information technologies.

Information Systems↗
USGS1982

Flood of May 24-25, 1981, in the Austin, Texas, metropolitan area

Hydrologic data pertaining to the magnitude and areal extent of flooding that occurred on May 24-25, 1981, along Shoal, Walnut, and Little Walnut Creeks in the Austin, Texas, metropolitan area are presented in this atlas. The flood boundary maps and other flood data provide a technical data base for land-use planning.

Texas↗
USGS2011

OpenStreetMap Collaborative Prototype, Phase 1

Phase One of the OpenStreetMap Collaborative Prototype (OSMCP) attempts to determine if the open source software developed for the OpenStreetMap (OSM, http://www.openstreetmap.org) can be used for data contributions and improvements that meet or exceed the requirements for integration into The National Map (http://www.nationalmap.gov). OpenStreetMap Collaborative Prototype Phase One focused on road data aggregated at the state level by the Kansas Data Access and Support Center (DASC). Road data from the DASC were loaded into a system hosted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Geospatial Technical Operations Center (NGTOC) in Rolla, Missouri. U.S. Geological Survey editing specifications were developed by NGTOC personnel (J. Walters and G. Matthews, USGS, unpub. report, 2010). Interstate and U.S. Highways in the dataset were edited to the specifications by NGTOC personnel while State roads were edited by DASC personnel. Resulting data were successfully improved to meet standards for The National Map once the system and specifications were in place. The OSM software proved effective in providing a usable platform for collaborative data editing

Open-File Report↗
USGS1979

Water-resources investigations of the U.S. Geological Survey in Montana, October 1978 through September 1979

The report describes water-resources investigations of the U.S. Geological Survey in Montana, October 1978 through September 1979. Programs consist of (1) collecting hydrologic data on a continuing basis, (2) conducting water-resources appraisals of surface and ground water, (3) conducting supportive research in hydrology and related fields, (4) disseminating water data and results of investigations to the public, (5) coordinating acquisition of water data by Federal agencies, and (6) providing technical assistance in hydrologic fields to other government agencies.

Montana↗