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The South Fork Little River (SFLR) and the North Fork Little River (NFLR) are two major headwater tributaries that flow into the Little River just south of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Both tributaries are included in those water bodies in Kentucky and across the Nation that have been reported with declining water quality. Each tributary has been listed by the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet—Kentucky Division of Water in the 303(d) List of Waters for Kentucky Report to Congress as impaired by nutrients, pathogens, and sediment for contact recreation from point and nonpoint sources since 2002. In 2009, the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet—Kentucky Division of Water developed a pathogen total maximum daily...
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The Water Availability Tool for Environmental Resources (WATER) is a TOPMODEL-based hydrologic model that depends on spatially accurate soils data to function in diverse terranes. In Kentucky, this includes mountainous regions, karstic plateau, and alluvial plains. Soils data are critical because they quantify the space to store water, as well as how water moves through the soil to the stream during storm events. We compared how the model performs using two different sources of soils data--Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO) and State Soil Geographic Database laboratory data (STATSGO)--for 21 basins ranging in size from 17 to 1564 km2. Model results were consistently better when SSURGO data were used, likely...
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Suspended sediment is a constituent of water quality that is monitored because of concerns about accelerated erosion, nonpoint contamination of water resources, and degradation of aquatic environments. In order to quantify the relationship among different sediment parameters for Kentucky streams, long-term records were obtained from the National Water Information System of the U.S. Geological Survey. Suspended-sediment concentration (SSC), the parameter traditionally measured and reported by the U.S. Geological Survey, was statistically compared to turbidity and total suspended solids (TSS), two parameters that are considered surrogate data. A linear regression of log-transformed observations was used to estimate...
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The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is home to more than 50% of the migratory waterfowl in North America. Although the PPR provides an abundance of temporary and permanent wetlands for nesting and feeding, increases in commodity prices and agricultural drainage practices have led to a trend of wetland drainage. The Northern Shoveler is a migratory dabbling duck species that uses wetland habitats and cultivated croplands in the PPR. Richland County in North Dakota and Roberts County in South Dakota have an abundance of wetlands and croplands and were chosen as the study areas for this research to assess the wetland size and cultivated cropland in relation to hydrologic soil groups for the Northern Shoveler habitat....
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This report describes Phase II modifications made to the Water Availability Tool for Environmental Resources (WATER), which applies the process-based TOPMODEL approach to simulate or predict stream discharge in surface basins in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The previous (Phase I) version of WATER did not provide a means of identifying sinkhole catchments or accounting for the effects of karst (internal) drainage in a TOPMODEL-simulated basin. In the Phase II version of WATER, sinkhole catchments are automatically identified and delineated as internally drained subbasins, and a modified TOPMODEL approach (called the sinkhole drainage process, or SDP-TOPMODEL) is applied that calculates mean daily discharges for...
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