USGS Web Tools for Evaluating Groundwater Quality in California

Instructors: Bryant Jurgens and George Bennett V.

Recently, the USGS developed a metric for scoring wells in order to identify areas of improving and degrading groundwater quality conditions in California. The metric is based on the direction and magnitude of a trend slope as well as constituent concentrations, allowing differentiation of improving or degrading conditions in areas with low to moderate concentrations from those with moderate to high concentrations. Multi-year to decadal groundwater-quality trends were computed from periodic, inorganic water-quality data for 38 constituents collected between 1974 and 2014 for compliance monitoring for more than 13,000 public-supply wells. These scores provide resource managers and others with valuable information about local and regional groundwater-quality conditions potentially applicable to the development of monitoring or management plans.

This workshop will introduce attendees to two USGS web-based tools that can be used to explore inorganic water-quality trends in public-supply wells throughout California and to help understand how those trends could arise from well-construction characteristics and non-point-source loading from historical and current land uses. The trend-analysis tools will be described and demonstrated, and attendees will then use the tools to visualize and understand constituent trends in their chosen parts of the state.

There is no additional charge for this workshop but space is limited so please RSVP  in order to save yourself a seat.