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As part of a long-term cooperative program to monitor water quality within the Scituate Reservoir watershed, the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Providence Water Supply Board collected streamflow and water-quality data at the Scituate Reservoir and tributaries. Streamflow and concentrations of chloride and sodium estimated from records of...

A series of 15 digital flood-inundation maps was developed for a 10.2-mile reach of the Pawtuxet River in the municipalities of West Warwick, Warwick, and Cranston, Rhode Island, by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers....

We test the use of a mixed-effects model for estimating lag to peak for small basins in Maine (drainage areas from 0.8 to 78 km2). Lag to peak is defined as the time between the center of volume of the excess rainfall during a storm event and the resulting peak...

Streamflow and concentrations of sodium and chloride estimated from records of specific conductance were used to calculate loads of sodium and chloride during water year (WY) 2015 (October 1, 2014, through September 30, 2015) for tributaries to the Scituate Reservoir, Rhode Island. Streamflow and water-quality data used in the study...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the International Joint Commission, compiled historical data on regulated streamflows and lake levels and estimated unregulated streamflows and lake levels on Forest City Stream at Forest City, Maine, and East Grand Lake on the United States-Canada border between Maine and New Brunswick to...

We analyzed a five year, high frequency time series generated by an in situ fluorescent dissolved organic matter (fDOM) sensor installed near the Connecticut River’s mouth, investigating high temporal resolution DOM dynamics in a larger watershed and longer time series than previously addressed. We identified a...

The daily and annual loads of nitrate plus nitrite and total nitrogen for the Connecticut River at Middle Haddam, Connecticut, were determined for water years 2009 to 2014. The analysis was done with a combination of methods, which included a predefined rating curve method for nitrate plus nitrite and total...

Rainfall from a storm on October 24–27, 2017, and Tropical Storm Philippe on October 29–30, created conditions that led to flooding across portions of New Hampshire and western Maine. On the basis of streamflow data collected at 30 selected U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) streamgages in the Androscoggin River, Connecticut River,...

The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services and the Department of Health and Human Services, has developed a hydrologic model to assess the effects of short- and long-term climate change on hydrology in New Hampshire. This report documents the model and datasets developed...

Flow-proportional composite water samples were collected in water years 2013 and 2014 by the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, from the Blackstone River at Millville, Massachusetts (U.S. Geological Survey station 01111230), about 0.5 mile from the border with Rhode Island. Samples were collected...

Crystalline bedrock aquifers in New England and parts of New Jersey and New York (NECR aquifers) are a major source of drinking water. Because the quality of water in these aquifers is highly variable, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) statistically analyzed chemical data on samples of untreated groundwater collected from...

In 2003 and 2004, the U.S. Geological Survey investigated the availability of groundwater resources in a 160-square mile area of coastal New Hampshire (Figure 1) using a regional groundwater flow model (Mack, 2009). At that time, population growth and increasing water demand prompted concern for the sustainability of the region’s...

IntroductionThe U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in support of the Massachusetts Estuaries Project (MEP), delineated groundwater-contributing areas to various hydrologic receptors including ponds, streams, and coastal water bodies throughout southeastern Massachusetts, including portions of the Plymouth-Carver aquifer system and all of Cape Cod. These contributing areas were delineated over a 6-year...

The glacial aquifer system groundwater availability study seeks to quantify (1) the status of groundwater resources in the glacial aquifer system, (2) how these resources have changed over time, and (3) likely system response to future changes in anthropogenic and environmental conditions. The glacial aquifer system extends from Maine to...

A better understanding of stormwater generation and solute sources is needed to improve the protection of aquatic ecosystems, infrastructure, and human health from large runoff events. Much of our understanding of water and solutes produced during stormflow comes from studies of individual, small headwater catchments. This study compared many different...

Arsenic concentrations from 20 450 domestic wells in the U.S. were used to develop a logistic regression model of the probability of having arsenic >10 μg/L (“high arsenic”), which is presented at the county, state, and national scales. Variables representing geologic sources, geochemical, hydrologic, and physical features were among the significant...

Three existing multivariate logistic regression models were assessed using new data to evaluate the capacity of the models to correctly predict the probability of groundwater arsenic concentrations exceeding the threshold values of 1, 5, and 10 micrograms per liter (µg/L) in New Hampshire, USA. A recently released testing dataset includes...

The glacial aquifer system in the United States is a major source of water supply but previous work on historical groundwater trends across the system is lacking. Trends in annual minimum, mean, and maximum groundwater levels for 205 monitoring wells were analyzed across three regions of the system (East, Central,...

We present a logistic regression approach for forecasting the probability of future groundwater levels declining or maintaining below specific groundwater-level thresholds. We tested our approach on 102 groundwater wells in different climatic regions and aquifers of the United States that are part of the U.S. Geological Survey Groundwater Climate Response...

The source water area for the drinking-water supply of the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, encompasses major transportation corridors, as well as large areas of light industrial, commercial, and residential land use. Because of the large amount of roadway in the drinking-water source area, the Cambridge water supply is affected by...

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Rhode Island DOT are assessing and addressing roadway contributions to total maximum daily loads (TMDLs). Example analyses for total nitrogen, total phosphorus, suspended sediment, and total zinc in highway runoff were done by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with FHWA to...

Potential contamination bias was estimated for 8 nutrient analytes and 40 pesticides in stream water collected by the U.S. Geological Survey at 147 stream sites from across the United States, and representing a variety of hydrologic conditions and site types, for water years 2002–12. This study updates previous U.S. Geological...

The stochastic empirical loading and dilution model (SELDM) was used to demonstrate methods for estimating risks for water-quality exceedances of event-mean concentrations (EMCs) of total-copper. Monte Carlo methods were used to simulate stormflow, total-hardness, suspended-sediment, and total-copper EMCs as stochastic variables. These simulations were done for the Charles River Basin...

Global mercury contamination largely results from direct primary atmospheric and secondary legacy emissions, which can be deposited to ecosystems, converted to methylmercury, and bioaccumulated along food chains. We examined organic horizon soil samples collected across an elevational gradient on Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondack region of New York State, USA...

High-frequency dissolved organic carbon and nitrate measurements reveal differences in storm hysteresis and loading in relation to land cover and seasonality...