USGS Submissions

The Lower Colorado River High Flow Experiment in Mexico is a collaborative monitoring project with teams of scientists from governments, universities, and non-profits on both sides of the border. The goal of the project is to document post-flow changes in the vegetation and riparian habitat along the lower Colorado River in response to a pulse flow mandated by the “Minute 319” international agreement.  See related disussion in the Bureau of Reclamation section, “Colorado River Delta Restoration.”

The National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program is collecting water, ecological, and sediment data from hundreds of sites across the country in support of Regional Stream Quality Assessments (RSQA). USGS imagery is an important part of this work and is being used to validate locations of municipal wastewater discharge, surface-water impoundments, and irrigation patterns and to map transects across streams selected for monitoring.  GPS technology is used to field verify and validate final coordinates for these sites.

Stream-channel geomorphologic characteristics determine water flow dynamics and are important features to capture when performing physical habitat assessments. The USGS is using airborne lidar to quantify channel morphology and characterize streambanks at the watershed scale. Geomorphic parameters of channel bottom width, channel top width, bankfull width, bank angle, bank height, channel gradient, and sinuosity are being computed. These metrics are used to develop relations between geomorphic characteristics and ecological assessments.

USGS ecology and biology researchers met with colleagues from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to discuss interest by the State of Oregon in acquiring and using lidar data to assess riparian vegetation and reach-scale characteristics associated with surveyed segments of streams. The USGS scientists shared their experiences using lidar data for stream and riparian projects, and discussed existing and potential collaboration opportunities.

The Arizona Water Use Program relies heavily on recent aerial photography and satellite images to detect and delineate active farm parcels in Arizona.  The boundaries of active farm parcels are traced using GIS software to estimate irrigated acreage.  These parcels are then visited by USGS Arizona Water Science Center staff to collect field data, which are combined with remote sensing data to estimate acreage, crop type, and total irrigation withdrawals.  The Arizona Water Science Center conducts this work for the national 5-year  water-use compilation and for a cooperat

WaterSmart is an interdisciplinary and collaborative project designed to help optimize water use in California’s agricultural areas. USGS is developing automated cropland classification algorithms (ACCA) that rapidly and routinely map croplands and cropland fallow areas annually.

Estimating evapotranspiration (ET) using satellite data provides a way to monitor and optimize water use, which is a critical management objective in water-limited regions and during times of drought. In contrast to most studies that look at ET in agricultural areas, we explored ET in urban areas using vegetation indices derived from high-resolution WorldView-2 (WV2) imagery. The study site was Veale Gardens in Adelaide, Australia, for which five WV2 images from March 2012 to January 2013 were analyzed.

High-resolution hydrographic mapping was completed for a pilot area consisting of three 12-digit hydrological units on Skunk Creek near Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Earth observation data from NASA’s MODIS instruments are helping to improve the accuracy and decision-making effectiveness of a widely used tool for water-quality management. SPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed Attributes (SPARROW) is a primary water-quality tool used by the USGS to document contaminant input sources, monitor rates of contaminant flux in streams, and determine the factors affecting contaminant transport. Current models are formulated to represent long-term average conditions.

Until recently, there has been a scarcity of comprehensive, consistent, timely, and geospatially-detailed information about irrigation needed to support studies linking agricultural land use change to processes like contaminant transport or aquifer water use. MODIS data are being used to refine mapping of irrigation patterns across the country. Peak annual NDVI values for 2012 are computed from MODIS data that represent a proxy for maximum vegetation vigor.