Current Research

• ensuring water used for consumption meets drinking water standards.
• monitoring of nitrates, pesticides, bacteria, sediment, other pollutants, and water-quality parameters.

• providing instantaneous results, such as those available on the Platte River, to the public through NWISweb.
• monitoring of aquatic systems and habitats for ecological changes.

• examining the interaction between surface water and groundwater.
• improving understanding of aquifer responses to continuing demands on groundwater resources.
• estimating water-level and storage changes in large aquifers such as the High Plains aquifer.
• investigating novel mechanisms affecting streamflow such as tile drains.

• determining which aquifers are a usable resource using age tracers and water-quality data.
• providing new insights into water budgets by estimating quantities of groundwater recharge and stream base flow and relating them to soil type, land use, and geology on local scales.
• measuring and evaluating the movement of recharge water through the unsaturated zone.

• increasing understanding about the sustainability of water resources during prolonged drought.

• estimating extents of flood waters using the USGS Flood Inundation Mapping process.

• developing information and tools that can be used to assess the groundwater availability of the northern High Plains aquifer.
• evaluating regional and temporal trends in the mass balance of groundwater resources for entire aquifers and quantifying the natural and anthropogenic processes that affect water budgets.
• modeling effects of groundwater withdrawal on the availability of surface water and the long-term effects of groundwater withdrawal on the groundwater resource.

• estimating quantities of groundwater recharge and stream base flow and relating them to soil type, land use, and geology on a local scale.
• using thermal imagery and coupled groundwater/surface-water gages to understand groundwater/surface-water interaction.

Current Research Projects

High Plains Groundwater Availability Study

Elkhorn Loup Model

Sand Hills and Dissected Plains Water Budgets

Groundwater/Surface-Water Interactions in the Loup River Basin

Flood Inundation Mapping

Water Movement Through the Unsaturated Zone of the High Plains Aquifer in the Central Platte Natural Resources District, Nebraska

• understanding process that create and maintain ecological habit.
• monitoring and assessing geomorphic change and sediment transport in river side-channels and chutes.
• determining why aquatic productivity within river reaches may be low and the researching the effects of low productivity on fish health.

• investigating possible causes and characteristics of algal blooms.
• monitoring the effectiveness of bioretention cells as a method of stormwater management.
• exploring variation and usability of sand bars as habitat.

Current Research Projects

• monitoring and assessing geomorphic change and sediment transport in constructed river side-channels and chutes.
• determining whether sand from reservoir deltas can be used as proppant.

• assessing the impact of hydraulic dredging discharge.

Current Research Projects