U.S.
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Open-File Report 03-286
Water-Quality Data for Walnut Canyon and Wupatki National Monuments, Arizona--2001-02
By
Blakemore E. Thomas
ABSTRACT
Water-quality data are provided for four sites in Walnut Canyon and Wupatki
National Monuments in north-central Arizona. These data describe the current
water quality and provide baseline water-quality information for monitoring
future trends.
Water samples were collected from a ground-water seep and well in Walnut Canyon
and from a spring and a river in Wupatki during September 2001 to September
2002. Water from the four sites is from four different sources. In Walnut Canyon,
Cherry Canyon seep is in a shallow local aquifer, and the Little Colorado River
contains ground-water discharge from several aquifers and runoff from a 22,000
square-mile drainage area.
Concentrations of dissolved solids were similar within the two monuments; the
range for water samples from Walnut Canyon was 203 to 248 milligrams per liter,
and the range for water samples from Wupatki was 503 to 614 milligrams per liter.
Concentrations of trace elements were generally low in water samples from the
three ground-water sites--Cherry Canyon seep, Walnut Canyon headquarters well,
and Heiser Spring. The water sample collected from the Little Colorado River,
however, had high concentrations of aluminum (4,020 micrograms per liter), antimony
(54 micrograms per liter), arsenic (14.3 micrograms per liter), and iron (749
micrograms per liter) relative to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Primary
and Secondary Maximum Contaminant Levels.
Concentrations of nitrate (as nitrogen) in water samples from the four sites were generally low (0.11 to 1.8 milligrams per liter) and are within the upper 25 percent of nitrate concentrations measured in the regional aquifer near Flagstaff in 1996 and 1997. Water samples from Cherry Canyon seep, Heiser Spring, and the Little Colorado River contained total coliform bacteria. Fecal coliform and Escherichia coli bacteria were found in water samples from Cherry Canyon seep and the Little Colorado River.
Abstract
Introduction
Methods
Water-quality data
Summary
References cited
This report is available online in Portable Document Format (PDF). If you do not have the Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader, it is available for free download from Adobe Systems Incorporated.
Document Accessibility: Adobe Systems Incorporated has information about PDFs and the visually impaired. This information provides tools to help make PDF files accessible. These tools convert Adobe PDF documents into HTML or ASCII text, which then can be read by a number of common screen-reading programs that synthesize text as audible speech. In addition, an accessible version of Acrobat Reader 5.0 for Windows (English only), which contains support for screen readers, is available. These tools and the accessible reader may be obtained free from Adobe at Adobe Access.
For more information about USGS activities in Arizona, visit the USGS Arizona District home page.
Please direct questions or comments to the Arizona Web Team
| AccessibilityFOIAPrivacyPolicies and Notices | |
  |
|