C

A Plan to Enhance the National Water-Use Information Program

The National Research Council Committee on USGS Water Resources Research recently conducted a review of the National Water-Use Information Program (NWUIP) to determine the best approach for future studies of water use by the USGS (National Research Council, 2002). The following are some of the findings and recommendations of the Committee to the USGS:

• The NWUIP is the Nation’s only comprehensive source of information on the status and trends of water use. The USGS is uniquely suited to provide this essential national information, working with its State-level cooperative partners and with other Federal agencies.
• The NWUIP should be viewed as much more than a data-collection and database management program. The NWUIP should be elevated to a water-use science program, emphasizing applied research and techniques development in both the statistical estimation of water use, as well as the determinants and impacts of water using behaviors.
• To better support water-use science, the USGS should build on existing data-collection efforts to systematically integrate data sets, including those maintained by other Federal and State agencies, within the data-collection and water-use estimation activities of the NWUIP.
• The USGS should systematically compare water-use estimation methods to identify the techniques best suited to the requirements and limitations of the NWUIP. One goal of this comparison should be to determine the standard error for every water-use estimate.
• The USGS should focus on the scientific integration of water use, water flow, and water quality, to expand knowledge and generate policy-relevant information about human impacts on both water and ecological resources.