NWDTW 2024

Each year, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) personnel collect approximately 52,000 water-quality samples from rivers and streams across the United States. Several samplers are employed by the USGS for water-quality sample collection in riverine environments. These samplers are coated with Plasti Dip® to protect the exterior of the sampler; however, Plasti Dip® is susceptible to fraying and wear, requiring maintenance. Alternative coatings were tested to determine if a different coating is better suited for the samplers. The alternative coatings included DuraCoat®, Raptor, and powder coating; a fifth option was bare metal. Samplers with different coatings were evaluated based on initial coating application, equipment-blank samples, a controlled-destruction test, blank-sample collection with worn samplers, maintenance and re-coating of samplers, and field-use and degradation tracking. The powder-coated sampler proved to be the top performer in each aspect of the study.

This session will cover various aspects of the USGS PFAS sampling strategy.
It will include the development of the strategy and results from preliminary evaluations in cleaning protocols, material selection and techniques.
Target audience: Staff who are collecting discrete water-quality samples for PFAS analysis.

Learn more about the completed field evaluation of three commercially available water temperature thermistors (Sutron AquaTemp, Forest Technology Systems (FTS) Digitemps, and Instrumentation Northwest (INW) T1 SDI-12), findings, and future steps. The three temperature thermistors were installed side-by-side at 6 different locations from Water Science Centers that volunteered for the study (locations include Hawaii, New York, Nevada, Indiana, North Carolina, and South Dakota) and operated for 18 months. Data and more information are available at Water Temperature Thermistor Field Test Sharepoint (https://doimspp.sharepoint.com/sites/usgs-Continuous-Water-Quality/SitePages/Water-Temperature-Thermistor-Field-Test.aspx).

Temperature is a principal driver for a variety of in-stream processes including but not limited to biotic activities, chemical reactions, and changes in fluid properties. Additionally, changes in precipitation patterns, snow cover, stream shading, groundwater inputs, and air temperature are driving factors for stream temperatures. The Illinois River Basin supports a variety of uses such as wildlife habitat, power generation, and recreation. Higher in-stream temperatures can lead to harmful algal blooms and other biological and chemical extremes that can cause diminished or toxic habitat for wildlife and limit the human use of streams and rivers within the Illinois River Basin.

As part of the Next Generation Water Observing System (NGWOS) project in the Illinois River Basin paired air and water temperature probes were deployed at 34 sites in 4 major tributaries to the Illinois River and includes monitoring upstream and downstream of 3 reservoirs. This broad spatial distribution using relatively low-cost temperature probes will provide a dataset that could be used to inform numerous research questions across disciplines and agencies.

The objective of this effort is two-fold: (1) to assess the effects of different environmental factors on temperature dynamics in surface water and, (2) to quantify the effect of reservoirs on stream temperature in reaches downstream of a dam. Specifically, what are the major drivers for stream temperatures within the Illinois River Basin and how do these drivers change seasonally or geographically within the basin.

This information is intended for a presentation, rather than a training course.
Multiple techniques are being used in two Colorado reservoir systems (the Three Lakes System near Granby, Colorado, and Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison, Colorado) to monitor Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs). The techniques are continuous monitoring of fluorescence of total chlorophyll and phycocyanin, discrete sampling for chlorophyll-a and algal taxonomy, and construction of satellite (Sentinel 2) models mapping chlorophyll-a concentrations. In the presentation we will compare the results of the different monitoring techniques with the timing of HABs in the reservoirs. The different techniques have different utility in each of the reservoirs and used in combination help track the occurrence of HABs throughout the ice-free season.

The Hach Nitratax has been extensively used by the USGS to collect real-time nitrate concentrations in surface waters. The Nitratax has been replaced by the NT3 series creating uncertainty about data quality and comparability to existing nitrate data. Preliminary results from laboratory and field testing the NT3 series will be shown.

Understanding the water quality of U.S. streams and rivers requires consistent data collection and analysis over decades. The U.S. Geological Survey’s National Water Quality Network (NWQN) was established to facilitate national-scale understanding of surface-water quality conditions through the collection of comparable data in large rivers and small streams in different geographic and land-use settings. Data collected by the NWQN support the needs of Federal, State and local stakeholders tasked with managing our Nation’s water resources. This talk will provide an overview of the history of national-scale, surface-water quality monitoring in the USGS, current network objectives and scope, data collection and reporting methods, sampling resources as well as published products utilizing NWQN data.

With the recent launch of AQUARIUS Samples (AQS), there is massive opportunity to grow our water quality workflows. AQS has been launched with an eye towards extensibility through the Discrete Samples Extensibility Tools (DSET), Data Hub Data Warehouse with Dremio, and the Data Hub Service Mesh. The USGS-built extensibility endpoints, along with the native Application Programming Interface offered by AQS itself, makes it easier than ever to build sophisticated data flows to support a wide variety of water quality workflows. This presentation will share what is known about the product roadmap for AQS so that people considering building tooling in the new AQS+ space can plan how to invest resources wisely and so that all users know what to expect from the product now that ASIP is closed.

As turbidity corrections for field-based fluorescence measurements have been conducted at more sites with elevated turbidities across the nation, evidence of poor correction performance has mounted. In some cases, extreme and erratic values were generated from the corrections. It was determined that the commonly used single parameter exponential fit approximated by Excel does a poor job of correcting for particle interference for many high turbidity samples. An evaluation of turbidity corrections experiments in the laboratory and field samples suggested that updated guidance for turbidity corrections was warranted for high turbidity waters. Here we evaluate different approaches to turbidity corrections for fluorescence measurements and discuss factors affecting the corrections.

This will be an overview of the Discrete Samples Extensibility Tools (DSET), any updates made since version 1.0.0, and some insights into feature updates that are in the works.

The USGS-National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP) has been an NADP partner agency since 1981. USGS is one of many Federal and State agencies of the National Trends Network (NTN) and provides funding for 82 out of a total of 263 NTN sites, the largest Federal funding contributor of all participating agencies. Weekly precipitation samples are collected and shipped to a central laboratory that analyzes the amount and type of atmospheric constituents in the precipitation sample. The NTN provides scientists, resource managers, and policymakers with long-term, high-quality atmospheric deposition data used to support research and decision-making in the areas of air quality, water quality, agricultural effects, forest productivity, materials effects, ecosystem studies, watershed studies, and human health.