USGS Water Science in Ohio, 2014–15

A snapshot of current or recently finished work as of 2014.

Ohio's water supports a web of human uses and wildlife: drinking water, recreation, farming and industry, fish and habitat. Normal rainfall covers these needs, but floods and droughts disrupt streamflow, groundwater, water quality and aquatic habitat. Ohio is bordered by the Ohio River and Lake Erie, has more than 44,000 miles of streams and more than 60,000 lakes and ponds, and nearly all its rural people drink groundwater.

The U.S. Geological Survey works with local, state and federal agencies and universities to give decision-makers and the public reliable science for managing Ohio's natural resources. It has no regulatory or development role; its only product is impartial, timely information open to everyone. More on the USGS Ohio Water Science Center's projects is at oh.water.usgs.gov.

Major watersheds of the Ohio River and Lake Erie Basins.

Data online

• Streamflow. With its partners the USGS runs about 240 streamgages in Ohio, about 160 of them computing streamflow, out of about 7,400 nationwide. Many record every 15 to 60 minutes and send data to the web hourly by satellite, for flood forecasting, water allocation, engineering, research, locks and dams, and safe recreation. Measurements, statistics and annual peaks are in the National Water Information System (NWIS).
• Groundwater. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) and the Miami Conservancy District track water levels in more than 140 wells; the USGS and ODNR publish them on Groundwater Watch and NWIS.
• Water quality. Near-real-time stations record temperature, specific conductance, pH, dissolved oxygen and turbidity every 15 to 60 minutes, for decisions on drinking water, treatment, regulation, recreation, ecosystems and safety.
• Water use. Every five years since 1950, Ohio's water use has been compiled by category — public supply, domestic, irrigation, livestock, aquaculture, industry, mining and thermoelectric power — by county and by 8-digit hydrologic unit.

Surface water

• Crest-stage gages. Streams draining less than 100 square miles have been under-represented in flood-peak studies, so in 2001 crest-stage gages went in at 18 sites. With enough peaks recorded, the statewide flood-frequency analysis can be updated.
• Flood maps and warnings. Hydrologic and hydraulic analyses give the water-surface height of floods of given sizes; combined with land elevation, they map the area flooded. Near streamgages where the National Weather Service forecasts flood levels, libraries of these maps let people see in advance, on web map tools, which areas are likely to flood.
• StreamStats. A web GIS tool giving low-flow, peak-flow and daily, monthly and annual flow statistics and basin characteristics for ungaged sites, plus published statistics for gaged ones.
• Upper Scioto River Basin. Central Ohio was projected to grow by 450,000 people between 2005 and 2030. The USGS is building a rainfall-runoff model of the basin to test whether existing and planned water supplies will meet future demand under several climate-change projections, and to evaluate other ways of managing water.
• Low-flow network. Low-flow data guide water-supply planning, wastewater and withdrawal permits and instream-flow needs; the network mixes continuous gages with sites measured only in dry periods.

Water quality and health

• Nowcasts for beaches. Lab tests for E. coli, the bacterium used to judge whether water is safe for swimming or canoeing, take 18 to 24 hours. Quick measurements such as rainfall or water clarity can instead feed models that estimate the chance E. coli is too high. The Ohio Nowcast gave near-real-time advisories for eight Lake Erie beaches and one river site in 2014, and a USGS study of 49 Great Lakes beaches found such models generally beat the conventional method.
• Microbial source tracking. The USGS Water Microbiology Laboratory in Columbus tests water for DNA markers of fecal contamination from humans, cattle and other ruminants, dogs and waterfowl, using quantitative PCR — alongside sanitary surveys, indicator bacteria and studies of how weather and flow move them.
• Faster tests. The USGS is optimising a rapid viability PCR method to detect living microorganisms that could be biological warfare agents, comparing it against culture methods using a stand-in for Bacillus anthracis, the anthrax bacterium. It is also testing an immunomagnetic method that gives E. coli and enterococci results for recreational water in 2 hours instead of 18–24.
• Harmful algal blooms. Health officials and state agencies have found cyanobacterial toxins in recreational and water-supply lakes in summer and early fall. The USGS and partners are sampling beaches and swimming areas — water quality, nutrients, cyanotoxins and plankton — and testing two possible early-warning signals: chlorophyll and phycocyanin measured by optical sensors, and cyanobacterial genes, including toxin genes, measured by qPCR.

Groundwater

• Arsenic. Odourless, tasteless arsenic can reach drinking water from natural deposits in rock and soil, and in parts of Ohio groundwater has exceeded the EPA's standard of 10 parts per billion. The USGS is sampling domestic wells in southwestern and central Ohio to learn which areas are most vulnerable to natural arsenic and to methane — a colourless, odourless gas that can burn and, in a confined space, displace oxygen — and has studied how well arsenic treatment works in home wells.
• Geauga County. Residents rely almost entirely on wells, and planners worry that growth will draw water faster than it is recharged. The USGS monitors water levels in 31 wells in four widely used aquifers, and a separate network near South Russell Village tests whether level changes come from yearly rainfall or from development.

Stormwater

Low-impact development manages stormwater close to where it falls, by limiting pavement and encouraging water to soak in and evaporate; best management practices are engineered measures to cut runoff and the pollution and flooding it brings to towns. The USGS is studying:

• two low-impact-development sites in the Chagrin River watershed, with long-term hydrologic records;
• Slavic Village, Cleveland — 20 wells and weather stations across two neighbourhood blocks, to guide future green infrastructure;
• Griggs Reservoir, Columbus — whether newly installed practices reduce runoff;
• St. Francis, Cincinnati — a pair of stepped rain gardens treating parking-lot runoff;
• Cincinnati State Technical and Community College — three practices meant to keep stormwater out of combined sewers.

Aquatic life

Gap analysis is a broad-scale look at aquatic biodiversity that guides field studies and monitoring. Models of where species could live were built for 130 fish, 70 bivalve and 17 native crayfish species from a habitat classification of Ohio's perennial streams. A newer study combines fish habitat and community data with regional climate projections to find vulnerable rivers and likely changes for important fish.

National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA)

Since 1991 NAWQA has tracked water-quality conditions, whether they are improving, and how natural features and human activity shape them, using consistent methods so results compare across regions; models extend them to unmonitored areas. In Ohio:

• Long-term surface-water sites, including sediment and water sampling on the Maumee River at Waterville (station 04193500), and periodic sampling since 1994 in the Lake Erie and Great and Little Miami basins.
• Ecological data on habitat, fish, algae and invertebrates, in the USGS BioData database.
• The Midwest Stream-Quality Assessment, which in summer 2013 measured contaminants, nutrients, sediment and ecological condition at streams across the Corn Belt, including western Ohio.
• Groundwater sampling and water levels in a glacial aquifer, in three well networks covering urban, farm and relatively undisturbed land.

Sources

• Shaffer, K.H., and Kula, S.P., 2014, Science to support the understanding of Ohio's water resources, 2014–15: U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2014–3097. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/fs20143097
• The map and photographs come from the fact sheet's PDF; screenshots of web tools drawn on commercial basemaps are left out.
• Rewritten in hubnx's own words.