Data and Spatial Studies at the USGS Texas Water Science Center

What the center does

Hydrologists, geographers, geophysicists and geologists at the USGS Texas Water Science Center build their projects on spatial data. Its capabilities include:

• web design, mapping and web services;
• custom programming and tools;
• hydraulic, hydrologic and groundwater modeling;
• data mining and statistics;
• database development and management;
• spatial analysis, modeling and visualization;
• watershed delineation and characterization;
• publication-quality cartography;
• land-cover and land-use mapping.

A sample of projects, in Texas and nationwide, follows.

Web tools

Modeling and data studies in Texas

• Brush management on the upper Guadalupe River — with the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board and the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, a SWAT watershed model of 1995–2010 simulated how replacing Ashe juniper with grassland would change water yields to the river and Canyon Lake (report).
• Groundwater in the Pecos County region — with local water districts, counties and the City of Fort Stockton, a three-phase study of the Edwards-Trinity and related aquifers in Brewster, Jeff Davis, Pecos and Reeves Counties: data collection and a geodatabase (phase 1), a conceptual model (phase 2), and a calibrated groundwater-flow model to simulate the past and project future pumping scenarios (phase 3).
• Reservoir data — with Texas Tech University, a pooled, depth-dependent dataset of storage, elevation and water quality for 59 Texas reservoirs and lakes, January 1965–January 2010, useful for studying reservoir nutrient status and possible effects of climate change (report and data).
• Rio Grande silvery minnow — with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service, fish communities and river habitats at four sites in and near Big Bend National Park, where the endangered minnow is being reintroduced; habitat was mapped in the field with mobile GIS and corrected GPS across seasonal flows (report).
• Stream slopes for flow estimates — with the Texas Department of Transportation, GIS and custom Python tools characterized the watersheds of 437 gaged Texas streams (drainage area, channel slope, sinuosity, stream order, land cover, drainage density and more) to improve estimates of velocity and discharge (journal article).
• Austin Group wells, Bexar County — with the San Antonio Water System, a geodatabase of geologic and hydrogeologic data from wells across a 377-square-mile area of central Bexar County, compiled mainly from drillers' and geophysical logs (report).
• Springs of the Trinity aquifer, northern Bexar County — with the Trinity Glen Rose Groundwater Conservation District, the Edwards Aquifer Authority and the San Antonio River Authority, a geodatabase of springs' location, discharge and water quality across 331 square miles, with USGS fieldwork from October 2010 to September 2011 (report and geodatabase).

Sources

Based on Thomas E. Burley, "Data and spatial studies of the USGS Texas Water Science Center," U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2014–3117 (2014); a work of the United States government in the public domain. The fact sheet's project images — mostly screenshots of web applications — and its QR codes are not reproduced; web-tool addresses are as published and may have moved.