National Water Availability Assessment for the US - Approach and preliminary results
Abstract
Water availability is vital to human development and sustaining healthy ecosystems. The concept of availability integrates aspects of water quantity, quality, uses, and ecosystem needs. Better information about the state of water availability promotes robust decision-making and highlights geographic differences at the regional and national scale. The USGS is developing a suite of conceptual and modeling tools to create an integrated assessment of water availability for the US. This presentation will introduce the approaches being used in this assessment, the publications and online tools planned to deliver its findings, and preliminary results of our assessments for aspects of water quantity, quality, and use in the US. To generate these results, national-scale hydrologic models were used to determine water quantity in several components of the hydrologic cycle. Water quality was analyzed using empirical information in a network of monitoring locations across the Nation. Water use was determined using novel modeling techniques which allowed withdrawals to be harmonized with hydrologic routing rather than political boundaries such as states or counties. These aspects of water availability form the core of the national assessment, which will ultimately lead to placing water availability in the context of human and ecological needs. This work is part of a broader effort within the USGS to integrate its water availability assessment capacity across disciplines to achieve decision-relevant outcomes.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2022
- Bibcode:
- 2022AGUFM.H53C..06S