Background on the White River Basin study

1991 -- planning and staffing
1992 -- review of historic data and design of data collection program
1993 - 1995 -- intensive data collection
1996 - 1997 -- analysis and interpretation of data and report preparation
1996 - 2000 -- limited data collection

The general philosophy behind the White River Basin study design is presented in Gilliom and others (1995). Briefly, the design is based on the concept of dividing the basin into environmental settings that have relatively homogeneous natural features and land-use conditions. These settings were used to develop a conceptual stratification of the hydrologic system in the White River Basin.

Conceptual stratification of environmental settings for the White River Basin

Data collection for the NAWQA program includes surface- and ground-water quality data and biological data collected at surface water sites. Surface-water data were collected routinely at a limited number of fixed sites (designed to address temporal variability) and a limited number of times (once or twice) at a larger number of synoptic sites (intended to address spatial variability). Fixed sites were selected either to represent one of the environmental settings in the basin (indicator sites) or to represent the water quality of a large portion of the basin (integrator sites). Seven indicator sites were chosen to represent five environmental settings in the basin. The indicator sites are in small subbasins (17- to 318-square-mile area). Four integrator sites were chosen. The integrator sites have much larger drainage areas (2,444- to 11,305-square-mile area) than the indicator sites. Ground-water observation well networks (22-25 wells each) were installed in four environmental settings. Wells in these networks were installed in the first water-bearing zone in order to assess the impact of the overlying land use on ground-water quality (these wells address the land-use study component of the White River Basin study). [More information about the types of sites and data collection components of NAWQA studies can be found in Gilliom and others (1995).]

Components of the data collection program for the White River Basin study

Water-quality data collection for the White River Basin study was concentrated on nutrients and pesticides. Major cation and anion data in surface and ground water and volatile organic compounds in ground water were also collected. Most of the water-quality and biological data was collected during 1993-95. There was a limited amount of surface-water-quality data collected during 1991-92 and 1996-00 and a very limited amount of ground-water data collected in 1999-00.

REFERENCE
Gilliom, R.J., Alley, W.M., and Gurtz, M.E., 1995, Design of the National Water-Quality Assessment program: Occurrence and distribution of water-quality conditions: U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1112, 33 p.

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Last Update: 05/29/2001
This page is maintained by Charles Crawford (send questions or comments to cgcrawfo@usgs.gov).
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