For more information on the National Water Summary, contact Kenneth Lanfear at: Telephone (703) 648-6852 Internet lanfear@usgs.gov The National T acquire information about the availability, quantity, quality, and use of water resources and to organize it in ways that portray the condition of the Nation's water resources to national, State, and local officials and the general public is the goal of the National Water Summary (NWS) program. Each NWS report covers one specific water-resources topic through extensive documentation in articles on the technical or institutional aspects of the topic and in State-by-State summaries as well as through descriptions of hydrologic conditions and waterrelated events. Stream water quality is the topic of the latest published report, "1990-91 National Water Summary-Hydrologic Events and Stream Water Quality." This 600-page, four-color report presents information on hydrologic conditions and water-related events for water years 1990 and 1991 and information on the status and trends of water quality in streams in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the western Pacific islands. As represented by the statistical analyses of as many as eight water-quality constituents and water properties, State water-quality summaries present information on conditions for water years 1987-89 and trends for one or more of the water-year periods 1970-89, 1975-89, 1980-89, and 1982-89. Articles on statistical analysis and quality assurance of water-quality data, trends in national water quality for the 1980's, and trends in water quality in four basins for the period extending from about 1905 to the present also are included. Richard W. Paulson produced the National Water Summary report series for 7 years and has been a water resources consultant since his retirement from the USGS in October 1993 State Water Resources Research Institutes Program ach year, the State Water Resources Eesearch Institutes support nearly 800 research projects at over 100 college and university campuses nationwide. More than 1,200 students have received training by participating in these research projects and the Institutes' informationtransfer projects. In recent years, the Institutes have published nearly 1,000 reports a year, nearly one-fourth of them articles in refereed scientific journals. The Institutes have also sponsored more than 130 conferences and published nearly 200 newsletters each year. The program is implemented through grants to 54 Institutes, one in each State, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam, which also serves the Federated States of Micronesia. Grants are used by the Institutes to support a program of research, education, and information transfer on State and regional waterresources problems. Recent accomplishments under the Institutes program, which is administered by the USGS, are as follows: A project sponsored by the North Carolina Water Resources Research Insti 13 Total phosphorus, 1982-89 tute has identified a new and previously unknown algae that has been responsible for massive fish kills. The results of the project were reported widely by national and international media. ● The Virginia Water Resources Research Center sponsored a project on safe drinking water, which provided the groundwork for State legislation passed in 1992 providing technical assistance for small water-treatment plants. • The Wisconsin Water Resources Center sponsored research leading to the development of a copper toxicity test that is now being used to identify potential copper toxicity in Wisconsin's drinking-water supplies. The research leading to the development of the test was cited by the American Chemical Society as one of the most innovative findings of the year. The results of a project sponsored by the Texas Water Resources Institute are being used as a basis for changing Texas State regulations regarding the capture, storage, and onsite disposal of dairy wastes. The New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute sponsored a large interdisciplinary project to develop a reservoir-management model being used by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. John E. Schefter has administered the Water Resources Institutes State agency program since 1989 For more information on the State Water Resources Research Institutes, contact: Telephone (703) 648-6800 At Work Across the Nation in Global Change Research The Earth's interrelated environmental systems the climate, land, oceans, freshwater, atmosphere, and ecological systems have changed continually throughout Earth history. Human activities are having ever-increasing impacts on these systems. In order to sustain the environment as the human population grows and the associated demands for resources increase, the global community must develop a sound understanding of the causes and cycles of natural change and the impacts of human activities on the Earth's environmental systems. Only through such understanding is it possible to develop the capability to predict changes, to mitigate the impacts of human activities, and to formulate strategies for adapting to natural environmental change. Congress established the U.S. Global Change Research Program to coordinate the scientific research necessary to develop national and international policies concerning global environmental issues, particularly global climate change. The USGS plays an important role in this program. Drawing on the breadth of geologic, hydrologic, and landcharacterization expertise within the bureau, USGS global change research complements oceanic and atmospheric research within other Federal agencies as well as the biological research of other agencies and bureaus within the Department of the Interior. The USGS contributes to studies on the role of land, water, and ecological processes in global change and the natural history of global change. Evaluating the interactions of climate and hydrology and the impacts of environmental change on land and water resources is another important aspect of USGS global change research. USGS experience in the longterm collection, interpretation, and management of ground-based and remotely sensed information about geology, hydrology, and land characteristics provides a valuable resource for national and worldwide data bases used by global change researchers. "Global change" means changes in the global environment (including alterations in climate, land productivity, oceans or other water resources, atmospheric chemistry, and ecological systems) that may alter the capacity of the Earth to sustain life. -Global Change Research Act of 1990 Good data will be vital in solving the problems associated with global climate changes. The U.S. must be a leader in developing these information resources. -From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government that Works Better & Costs Less Snapshots of the Past, Models of the Future Global Snapshots Reveal Past Climate Change Th hrough the looking glass of past climate changes, researchers can view possible future climate changes. Understanding past climates provides the basis for clearly distinguishing those changes caused by human activities from those caused by natural climate variation. USGS scientists study the geologic record to assemble histories of past climate variation and worldwide "snapshots" of climates at specific times in the past by using fossil and geochemical data. These geologic histories and global snapshots will help in assessing the causes, consequences, and extremes that might result from any future climate changes. Recent work by USGS scientists on a 600,000-year climate record from Devils Hole in Death Valley National Monument, for example, questions the prevailing theory about the cause of the ice ages. The Milankovitch theory holds that systematic variations in the tilt and wobble of the Earth on its axis and in its orbit around the Sun cause predictable variations in the distribution of solar energy that reaches the surface of the Earth. The theory predicts cycles of low and high levels of incoming solar energy at the Earth's surface that should match the waxing and waning of ice ages. The ages of climate changes in the Devil's Hole record have been determined in detail by using uranium and thorium isotopic dating methods. The pattern of climate change in the Devil's Hole record matches well the pattern of other climate records (such as those obtained from ice cores in Antarctica and from deep-sea sediment cores), but the pattern does not match as well the cycles of change in incoming solar energy predicted by the Milankovitch theory. Researchers on the Devil's Hole project support a competing hypothesis for the causes of climate change-the nonlinear dynamic hypothesis, which holds that ice-age climates are the result of complex interplay between the oceans, the polar ice caps, and the atmosphere. This research demonstrates the need for reducing uncertainties about the causes of climate change and fosters a healthy skepticism about our current ability to forecast the future. Recent work by USGS scientists on a 600,000-year climate record from Devils Hole in Death Valley National Monument, for example, questions the prevailing theory about the cause of the ice ages. By reconstructing worldwide snapshots of past climates, scientists can test how effective climate models are in simulating known past conditions and thereby improve the ability to model and predict the impacts of future changes in global climate. International concern about possible global warming is focusing the attention of scientists on understanding climate conditions during periods in the geologic past when the average global temperature was higher than it is today. USGS scientists currently are working with scientists around the world reconstructing climate snapshots for a warm period during the Pliocene Epoch, about 3 million years ago, and for a geologically brief interglacial interval when the Earth was only slightly warmer than it is today, 61 A Partner in As the Nation's principal conservation agency, the Department of the Interior is responsible for managing public lands and other resources throughout the United States and its Trust Territories. Today, a major concern of resource managers is how natural and cultural resources are affected by environmental change, whether caused by human activities or by natural variability. The USGS contributes to departmental global change research on sensitive environments and resources. This research provides information necessary for managers to make decisions on a variety of environmental issues, including the ability to sustain water supplies, ecological systems, and biological diversity. about 130,000 years ago, preceding the last great ice-sheet advance. Where is the Missing Carbon? The more scientists understand the The processes that govern the atmosphere today, the more reliably they will be able to predict future changes. Much of the solar energy reaching Earth heats its surface. Some of this heat, along with heat energy generated within the Earth itself, is radiated back toward space. Certain gases in the atmosphere, called greenhouse gases (water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane, for example) absorb heat radiated from the Earth and, in turn, radiate energy back to the land and lower atmosphere, trapping heat in a manner similar to warming in a greenhouse. Many scientists believe that increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases caused by human. activities will increase the "greenhouse effect" in the atmosphere and lead to global warming. The amount of carbon dioxide produced each year by human activitiesmainly the use of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests-exceeds our best estimate of the combined amount of carbon dioxide absorbed each year into the atmosphere and oceans by about 2 billion tons. Much of this carbon dioxide is thought to be absorbed by the land, but exactly how much and in what form are USGS Global Change • Describe past and contemporary • Improve understanding of landatmosphere and land-ocean exchanges of water, energy, carbon, and nutrients. • Facilitate access to and use of global change data and information for research, resource management, education, and policy decisions. unknown. Locating this missing carbon dioxide and understanding the role of natural additions and subtractions in the global carbon budget are important steps in developing realistic national and international policies to regulate human emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Scientists have only recently learned about the missing carbon. Current theory suggests that this carbon is being stored on land. To test this hypothesis, USGS scientists are studying the movement of carbon between land and the atmosphere and between the land and the oceans, as well as in sediments, water, and soil, to help determine what happens to the greenhouse gas produced by human activities. Much of this research involves monitoring and experiments at several geographically distributed Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical Budget (WEBB) study sites established by the USGS, including alpine, forested upland, temperate lake, and tropical rain forest environments. At the Panola Mountain WEBB site near Atlanta, Ga., for example, the USGS is studying the past and present rates of carbon accumulation, erosion, transport, and burial in an area that was almost entirely deforested during the last century and is now recovering. Preliminary results suggest that recovering temperate forests in middle latitude regions, such as in the Panola Mountain watershed, are important carbon storage areas that help in balancing the present-day carbon budget. |