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The National Network of Reference Watersheds is a collaborative and multipurpose network of minimally disturbed watersheds and monitoring sites. The purpose of this website is to allow users to search the NNRW database of reference watersheds, to identify watersheds of interest, and download watershed information and water quality data. The current scope of the network is limited to freshwater streams. Membership in the network is voluntary and open to individuals, agencies, and institutions interested in participating in monitoring and (or) research in minimally disturbed and pristine watersheds. The NNRW defines reference watersheds as those minimally disturbed by human activity preferably in an area protected...
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Background - Turbid waters originating in the Schoharie Reservoir allegedly impair habitat and resident trout populations in Upper Esopus Creek; however, to date no scientific studies have documented adverse affects of altered thermal, suspended sediment (turbidity), and flow regimes on survival, growth, or behavior of trout or the health of their populations. The 424 mi2 Esopus Creek watershed is a tributary to the Hudson River in the south-central Catskill Mountains of New York State and is often considered to be two systems separated by the Ashokan Reservoir. The Upper Esopus Creek is considered the reach between its source, Winisook Lake, and the reservoir. Flows in the Upper Esopus Creek are supplemented by...
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Problem - The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP) Stream Management Program, in cooperation with local Soil and Water Conservation Districts, is implementing stream-restoration demonstration projects to decrease channel bed and bank erosion and improve water quality (lower suspended sediment and turbidity) in several priority streams of the Catskill Mountain Region (Fig. 1). A variety of issues relating to (a) the hydraulic geometry of stable and unstable stream channels, (b) validation of underlying assumptions used to characterize channel stability and design, and (c) the effects of restoration on stream-channel geomorphology, stability, biota, and sediment transport have not been...
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Introduction Mosquitoes are the principle vector of the West Nile Virus (WNV) which causes infections in humans and animals and has emerged as a public health threat throughout Long Island, NY. The WNV was first detected among birds and mosquitoes by the Suffolk County Department of Health Services (SCDHS) in 2000. In response to the public health concern, the USGS in cooperation with the SCDHS, began a 3-year study in 2002 to sample surface waters in selected wetlands for insecticides which were sprayed seasonally from a truck or helicopter as part of the county's vector-control program. These insecticides include Altosid (methoprene) and Scourge [1:3 ratio of resmethrin and piperonyl butoxide (PBO)]. Methoprene...
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American Eel (Anguilla Rostrata) Background The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has worked in cooperation with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) over the past 11 years to study the effects of channel geomorphology and impoundments on the distribution of common and rare mussels in the Neversink River and to characterize fish assemblages in tributaries to the Upper Delaware River in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The focus of this research and monitoring program has recently shifted toward studies of the rapidly declining American eel (Anguilla rostrata) populations in rivers of the tri-state region. There are many factors that could potentially cause the observed declines in local and continental populations of...
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Problem Almost 1900 public, private, and commercial waste-water treatment plants (WWTPs), many located upstream of drinking water intakes or within tributaries to water-supply reservoirs, are permitted to release effluents into surface- or ground-waters across New York State. More than 150 facilities have New York State SPEDES permits to discharge waste waters in the New York City East of Hudson and West of Hudson Water Supply Watersheds (NYC Watersheds), which provide drinking water to more than nine million people in and around New York City. Some common waste water treatment plant (WWTP) contaminants (e.g., polycyclic musks, alkylphenols, and estradiol) can cause estrogenic or androgenic changes in the reproductive...
Categories: Data, Project; Types: Downloadable, Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, Shapefile; Tags: Biogeochemical and Hydrologic Assessment, Biogeochemical and Hydrologic Assessment, BiogeochemicalandHydrologicAssessment, Completed, Contaminants, Emerging, All tags...
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Problem - The Esopus Creek is located in the Catskill Mountains of New York State and is part of the New York City (NYC) drinking water supply system. The basin was dammed in 1915 to form the Ashokan Reservoir splitting the creek into Upper (upstream of the reservoir) and Lower segments. The Schoharie Reservoir, located 27 miles north of the Ashokan Reservoir, supplies water to Upper Esopus Creek via the Shandaken tunnel. Waters from the Schoharie watershed enter Upper Esopus Creek at the Shandaken portal and travel 18 km before entering the Ashokan Reservoir. The two reservoirs account for approximately 40% of NYC’s mean annual water supply. Waters from the portal have been the focus of controversy and legal action,...
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Background The Long Island-New Jersey (LINJ) coastal drainages NAWQA study is one of the 1994 set and is coordinated from our West Trenton, NJ office. Tasks for the first two years, 1994-95, included staffing, developing a liaison process, analyzing existing data, and designing a data collection program that started in 1996. These planning activities lead to the study design for 3 years of intensive data collection in 1996-98. The intensive efforts includes multi-scale study approaches to collect samples of water, suspended and bed sediment, biologic tissues, and aquatic communities. The LINJ NAWQA study is scheduled to enter a low-intensity phase of monitoring and report writing in 1999 and return to another...
Categories: Data, Project; Types: Downloadable, Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, Shapefile; Tags: Climate and Land-Use Change, Climate and Land-Use Change, Climate and Land-Use Change, Coastal Science, Coastal Science, All tags...
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The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) is developing a unit management plan/environmental impact statement (UMP/EIS) for the Hudson Gorge Primitive Area, an area of Forest Preserve land encompassing a scenic stretch of the Hudson River in the Adirondack Park. Two goals of the UMP/EIS are to inventory natural resources and ecosystems and take actions to protect those resources while providing for appropriate types and levels of public recreational use. Because of the river's extensive whitewater reaches, it is the setting for a commercial rafting industry that operates during spring, summer, and fall. To increase flows in the Indian and Hudson Rivers, the Town of Indian Lake conducts...
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Background: Streams are ecologically, culturally, and economically important systems that are subject to impacts from a large array of human activities. There has been a relatively recent increase in efforts to manage, protect, and restore streams that have experienced physical, chemical, and biological degradation. Unfortunately, interest in any single restoration effort tends to be relatively short lived, and despite spending >$1 billion annually in the U.S. on stream restoration, little or no effort is devoted to evaluating the effectiveness or ecological success of most restoration projects (Bernhardt et al., 2005; Roni and Quimby, 2005). The limited post-restoration monitoring that occurs in many restoration...
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Background: Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) have thrived in the Esopus Creek since their introduction in the 1880s. The construction of the Ashokan Reservoir in 1915 changed the fishery by providing a stable lentic environment where adult trout could grow large and find refuge during periods when stream conditions become stressful. Although many adult Rainbow Trout spend time in the reservoir, it is believed that spawning occurs almost exclusively in the tributaries; most notably the Upper Esopus and its tributaries. Thus, the health of individual Rainbow Trout and the size of their spawning runs out of the Reservoir not only regulate the species’ future population in the reservoir, but also the population...
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Background The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) and Department of Health (NYSDOH), and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) plan to obtain data on chemical contaminants in fish from multiple Areas of Concern (AOCs) in New York State and use this information to evaluate fish consumption advisories, which are a critical component of most removal criteria for “Restriction on Fish and Wildlife Consumption” beneficial use impairments (BUI). The first project will be implemented in the Buffalo River AOC during summer 2017. This project will help determine if current fish consumption advisories each AOC are appropriate, if they can be modified, and if they support or do not support BUI removal...
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Problem: The Clean Water Act (PL 92-500) requires that the health of the Nation’s rivers and streams be assessed on a regular basis, and in the Northeast such assessments often use information from aquatic biological communities that live in the stream. Biomonitoring programs implemented by individual states evaluate biological data to assess stream health on the premise that certain sensitive species that are native to the region cannot survive when water quality is poor. The aquatic community data are typically condensed into a set of biological condition metrics that are scaled numerically to convey the relative degree of stream impairment (e.g., excellent, good, fair, poor). However, biological condition...
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The Great Lakes Restoration initiative (GLRI) template #77 (Beach Recreation Water Quality) in cooperation with 23 local and state agencies expanded the use of predictive modeling at 45 beaches throughout the Great Lakes (fig 1). Local agencies measure fecal-indicator bacteria such as Escherichia coli (E. coli.) along with easily obtained environmental variables used as surrogates to estimate concentrations of fecal-indicator bacteria through a predictive modeling approach. The predictive modeling is being developed by the use of linear regression and/or partial least-squares techniques. The models use software developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency known as “Virtual Beach”. Each beach model is based...
Categories: Data, Project; Types: Downloadable, Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, Shapefile; Tags: Biogeochemical and Hydrologic Assessment, Biogeochemical and Hydrologic Assessment, BiogeochemicalandHydrologicAssessment, Climate Impacts, Climate Impacts, All tags...
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A. BACKGROUND Aquatic macroinvertebrates, such as dragonfly larvae or crayfish have great potential for Mercury (Hg) monitoring, both as indicator organisms (or "sentinels'), and to provide critical information on Hg in lower food webs to assist in interpreting fish Hg levels. Despite these advantages, macroinvertebrates are not widely used in Hg monitoring because of the current need to directly analyze macoinvertebrate tissue for methyl-mercury (MeHg), at much greater expense than analyzing for total Hg (THg) (i.e. as a surrogate for MeHg), as with fish tissue. This is because the ratio of MeHg to THg in macroinvertebrates exhibits large taxonomic, spatial, and temporal variation, and there is no clear...
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The distribution of mercury (Hg) and sites of greatest Hg methylation are poorly understood in Catskill Mountain watersheds. Although concentrations of Hg in the water column are low, high concentrations of Hg in smallmouth bass and walleye have led to consumption advisories in most large New York City reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains. Mercury in natural waters can exist in many forms, including gaseous elemental mercury (Hg0), dissolved and particulate inorganic forms (Hg(II)), and dissolved and particulate methylmercury (MeHg). Most Hg in living organisms is MeHg, a highly neurotoxic form that bioaccumulates in aquatic food webs. The production of MeHg by methylation of inorganic Hg in the environment...
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Background The Shinnecock Nation is located on the south fork of eastern Long Island adjacent to the town of Southampton to the east, and the hamlet of Shinnecock Hills to the west, in Suffolk County, NY. Shinnecock Nation tribal lands encompass approximately 1.2 square miles and are bounded to the east and west by tidal creeks, and to the south by Shinnecock Bay. The Shinnecock Nation has a population of 662 residents who live in 256 housing units (U.S. Census, 2016). The Shinnecock Nation became the 565th federally recognized Tribe by the United States government in October 2010. (Shinnecock Nation, 2014). Shinnecock Nation tribal lands are situated in a coastal environment where bay and wetland health are...
Categories: Data, Project; Types: Downloadable, Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, Shapefile; Tags: Contaminants, Emerging, Contaminants, Emerging, Contaminants, Microbial, Contaminants, Microbial, Contaminants, Natural, All tags...
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A USGS biologist prepares to collect a sediment sample using a petit ponar dredge. Background:The Niagara River forms the boundary between the United States and Canada and was designated as a binational Area of Concern (AOC) in 1987 because past industrial discharges and hazardous waste sites had caused extensive degradation of aquatic habitats. Within the United States (eastern) portion of the AOC, seven Beneficial Use Impairments (BUIs) have been identified, including the degradation of the “benthos”, or the benthic macroinvertebrate community. Past assessments of macroinvertebrate community structure and sediment toxicity, which indicated that macroinvertebrate communities were adversely affected by contaminated...
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Background: The USGS propose a collaborative investigation with the NYSDEC to evaluate the current condition of benthic macroinvertebrate communities and toxicity of bed sediments in the Eighteenmile Creek Area of Concern (AOC). Sediment-toxicity data provided by the USGS and benthic-community data provided by the NYSDEC from inside the AOC will be compared to similar data from non-AOC sites in Eighteenmile Creek or nearby reference streams (of comparable drainage areas) to determine if the benthos-BUI (Beneficial-Use Impairment) designation is appropriate or if the BUI could be removed in Eighteenmile Creek. The remainder of this pre-proposal addresses only the direct USGS (sediment toxicity assessment) contribution...
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PROBLEM Alley Creek, a tributary to Little Neck Bay (Queens County, New York; figure 1) has been designated as impaired by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS DEC) for primary and secondary contact and included on the 303(d) Impaired Waterways for pathogens related to combined sewer overflow contributions. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYC DEP) and New York City Parks & Recreation have developed a long-term control plan (2014) and a watershed management plan (2015), respectively, to improve water quality and ecosystem health. Point and non-point sources of pathogens are implicated, including stormwater and combined-sewer outfalls, groundwater seepage, and...


map background search result map search result map Mercury concentration in water, sediment, and fish in the Neversink watershed, New York Estrogenicity in Streams of New York State Geomorphology, Biology, & Stability of Catskill Mountain Streams, New York Assessing American Eel Populations in Tributaries to the Upper Delaware River Hydrologic Assessment of the Shallow Groundwater-Flow System Beneath the Shinnecock Nation Tribal Lands, Suffolk County, New York Monitoring of Waterways for Mosquito Insecticides, Suffolk County, New York Effects of recreational flow releases on natural resources of the Indian and Hudson Rivers Quantitative assessment of water quality in the Upper Esopus Creek using fatty acid content of periphyton Use of telemetry to assess potential effects of Schoharie Reservoir waters on trout populations in the Upper Esopus Creek Developing and Implementing Predictive Models for Estimating Recreational Water Quality at Great Lakes Beaches Long Island-New Jersey (LINJ) Coastal Drainages Study -- Land Use Study (NY) The National Network of Reference Watersheds Status of benthic macroinvertebrate communities and toxicity of sediments in the Eighteenmile Creek Area of Concern, New York The Effectiveness of Total Mercury as a Surrogate for Methylmercury in Aquatic Invertebrates Effects of flow alteration on ecological health of streams across the Atlantic Highlands Ecoregion Contaminants in fish tissues from AOCs in New York State: The Buffalo River AOC 2-year post remediation Long-term trends in Rainbow Trout growth and naturalized populations in the Ashokan Basin Niagara River AOC-wide Benthos BUI Assessment Assessment of fecal contamination sources to Alley Creek, Queens County, New York Response of fish assemblages and habitat to stream restoration in the Ashokan Watershed Assessment of fecal contamination sources to Alley Creek, Queens County, New York Hydrologic Assessment of the Shallow Groundwater-Flow System Beneath the Shinnecock Nation Tribal Lands, Suffolk County, New York Contaminants in fish tissues from AOCs in New York State: The Buffalo River AOC 2-year post remediation Status of benthic macroinvertebrate communities and toxicity of sediments in the Eighteenmile Creek Area of Concern, New York Mercury concentration in water, sediment, and fish in the Neversink watershed, New York Quantitative assessment of water quality in the Upper Esopus Creek using fatty acid content of periphyton Use of telemetry to assess potential effects of Schoharie Reservoir waters on trout populations in the Upper Esopus Creek Niagara River AOC-wide Benthos BUI Assessment Long-term trends in Rainbow Trout growth and naturalized populations in the Ashokan Basin Response of fish assemblages and habitat to stream restoration in the Ashokan Watershed Effects of recreational flow releases on natural resources of the Indian and Hudson Rivers Monitoring of Waterways for Mosquito Insecticides, Suffolk County, New York Assessing American Eel Populations in Tributaries to the Upper Delaware River Geomorphology, Biology, & Stability of Catskill Mountain Streams, New York Long Island-New Jersey (LINJ) Coastal Drainages Study -- Land Use Study (NY) Estrogenicity in Streams of New York State Effects of flow alteration on ecological health of streams across the Atlantic Highlands Ecoregion Developing and Implementing Predictive Models for Estimating Recreational Water Quality at Great Lakes Beaches The Effectiveness of Total Mercury as a Surrogate for Methylmercury in Aquatic Invertebrates The National Network of Reference Watersheds