LIFT IWEA Webinar

Presented by James Duncker. The USGS is integrating its water science programs to better address the Nation’s greatest water resource challenges. At the heart of this effort are plans to intensively study at least 10 Integrated Water Science (IWS) basins — medium-sized watersheds (10,000-20,000 square miles) and underlying aquifers — over the next decade. The IWS basins will represent a wide range of environmental, hydrologic, and landscape settings and human stressors of water resources to improve understanding of water availability across the Nation. The Next Generation Water Observing System provides high-fidelity, real-time data on water quantity, quality, and use to support modern water prediction and decision-support systems that are necessary for informing water operations daily and decision-making during water emergencies. The Illinois River Basin provides an opportunity to implement the NGWOS in a system challenged by an overabundance of nutrients—primarily nitrogen and phosphorus—and associated harmful algal blooms. The NGWOS provides high-fidelity, real-time data on water quantity, quality, and use to support modern water prediction and decision-support systems that are necessary for informing water operations.