Water Availability

Borehole extensometers are instruments that monitor land subsidence caused by aquifer compaction. They provide precise, high-resolution measurements of changes in aquifer-system thickness. These changes in aquifer-system thickness contribute to vertical land motion (VLM) across the Virginia Coastal Plain, and are driven primarily by groundwater level decline due to human water usage. The Virginia...

Land subsidence is a loss of ground elevation, often experienced as the ground slowly sinking over the course of years. In eastern Virginia, high rates of groundwater use is a major factor in the land subsidence affecting the area. The Virginia-West Virginia Water Science Center, with the help of our partners, has been monitoring land subsidence in the Virginia Coastal Plain since 1979 using a...

Informed management of groundwater resources for the Eastern Shore of Virginia depends on the availability of detailed and up-to-date scientific information. The USGS and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality are conducting a long-term cooperative study to enhance the understanding of groundwater resources in the sole-source aquifer system beneath Accomack and Northampton counties...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with Resource Protection Group, Inc. is partnering with Reston Association to monitor the hydrology, water-quality, and ecology of two restored urban streams in Reston, Virginia – Snakeden Branch and The Glade. A combination of continuous and discrete hydrologic and water-quality data are collected to evaluate stream conditions and estimate sediment and...

The ecological limit functions (ELF) developed in cooperation with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) are a graphical representation of the current and historical state of aquatic biota in Virginia streams. The goal of this study was to quantify the potential species richness and habitat response to flow alteration using available long-term ecological data. Fish and benthic...

The Water-Monitoring-Site Mapper is an interactive map of Virginia and West Virginia water-monitoring-site locations from the USGS National Water Information System (NWIS). View and download surface water, groundwater, and water quality monitoring data for active sites. Functionality includes query, select, tabular display by county, hydrologic unit code (HUC), and exporting spatial and tabular...

Climate change raises concern that risks of hydrological drought may be increasing. We estimate hydrological drought probabilities for rivers and streams in the United States using maximum likelihood logistic regression (MLLR). Streamflow data from winter months are used to estimate the chance of hydrological drought during summer months. Daily streamflow data collected from 9,144 stream gages...

Many culverts and other drainage structures in rural West Virginia are located in small streams or valleys draining 100 acres or less. Design of these structures in West Virginia is generally done using discharge estimates made with widely used and well accepted methods. However, these methods require information including flow-segment length and channel geometry that are poorly characterized for...

Cost effective and safe highway bridge designs are required to ensure the long-term sustainability of Virginia’s road systems. The water flows that, over time, scour streambed sediments from bridge piers inherently affect bridge safety and design costs. To ensure safety, bridge designs must anticipate streambed scour at bridge piers over the lifespan of a bridge. Until recently Federal Highway...

Pennsylvanian- and Mississippian-age aquifers occupy approximately 86,000 square-miles in the Appalachian Plateaus Physiographic Province of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. As one of several USGS Regional Groundwater Studies, the primary goal of this study is to provide a regional understanding of groundwater flow and availability in the...

In recent years, hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested into the implementation of Best Management Practices in Fairfax County, Virginia, with the goal of improving water quality. Research has demonstrated that best management practices are effective at smaller scales, but less information is available to document the effectiveness of these best management practices at the watershed...

The objectives of this study are to identify 1) the relations between water levels in the ditches and groundwater levels near the ditches and in the interior of the Blocks, 2) possible relations between groundwater levels and tree growth rates, and 3) current nutrient chemistry and possible nutrient transport pathways in these wetlands.