Hydrologic data for the Obed River watershed, Tennessee

Abstract

For more information on the USGS-the Federal source for science about the Earth, its natural and living resources, natural hazards, and the environment, visit http://www.usgs.gov or call 1-888-ASK-USGS.For an overview of USGS information products, including maps, imagery, and publications, visit http://www.usgs.gov/pubprodTo order this and other USGS information products, visit http://store.usgs.gov Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.Although this information product, for the most part, is in the public domain, it also may contain copyrighted materials as noted in the text. Permission to reproduce copyrighted items must be secured from the copyright owner. AbstractThe Obed River watershed drains a 520-square-mile area of the Cumberland Plateau physiographic region in the Tennessee River basin. The watershed is underlain by conglomerate, sandstone, and shale of Pennsylvanian age, which overlie Mississippian-age limestone. The larger creeks and rivers of the Obed River system have eroded gorges through the conglomerate and sandstone into the deeper shale. The largest gorges are up to 400 feet deep and are protected by the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act as part of the Obed Wild and Scenic River, which is managed by the National Park Service.The growing communities of Crossville and Crab Orchard, Tennessee, are located upstream of the gorge areas of the Obed River watershed. The cities used about 5.8 million gallons of water per day for drinking water in 2010 from Lake Holiday and Stone Lake in the Obed River watershed and Meadow Park Lake in the Caney Fork River watershed. The city of Crossville operates a wastewater treatment plant that releases an annual average of about 2.2 million gallons per day of treated effluent to the Obed River, representing as much as 10 to 40 percent of the monthly average streamflow of the Obed River near Lancing about 35 miles downstream, during summer and fall. During the past 50 years , several dozen tributary impoundments and more than 2,000 small farm ponds have been constructed in the Obed River watershed. Synoptic streamflow measurements indicate a tendency towards dampened high flows and slightly increased low flows as the percentage of basin area controlled by impoundments increases.

Exposure and potential effects of pesticides and pharmaceuticals in protected streams of the US National park Service southeast region

“…In three (BISO, LIRI, OBRI) of these systems, lower cumulative contaminant detections and concentrations observed in tributary samples (BISO, OBRI only) than in primary-stream samples, comparable or decreasing cumulative detections and concentrations in downstream order in primary stream samples, combined with limited road access within the study reaches (except Leatherwood Ford, BISO) are consistent with fluvial inflows from upstream external sources, as suggested in other protected-area streams in the US (Battaglin et al, 2018;Bradley et al, 2017c;Elliott and VanderMeulen, 2017;Weissinger et al, 2018), Europe (Camacho-Muñoz et al, 2010), and Africa (Gerber et al, 2016). Likewise, the presence of wastewater sources, including private residential (septic) and municipal/community wastewater treatment facilities upstream of these systems (e.g., OBRI (Guyot, 2005;Knight et al, 2014)) and generally (median exposure conditions) lower detections and concentrations of pesticides (common landscape-derived, non-point contaminants) than pharmaceuticals (common wastewaterassociated, point-source contaminants) support the importance of fluvial inflows as contaminant sources to these three study reaches. Similarly, cumulative contaminant detections and concentrations in Wekiva River samples were comparable between upstream (WEKI-1) and downstream (WEKI-2) locations and generally higher than in the tributary (WEKI-3).…”

Putting Flow–Ecology Relationships into Practice: A Decision-Support System to Assess Fish Community Response to Water-Management Scenarios

“…Lake Holiday is a reservoir on the Obed River that supplies municipal water to the City of Crossville, Tennessee (0.059 m 3 /s average withdrawal in 2014). Downstream, the Crossville wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) releases treated effluent (0.096 m 3 /s annual average) into the Obed River [58,59]. In this system, effluent discharge exceeds upstream withdrawal because of an inter-basin transfer (IBT) from the Caney Fork River Basin into the Obed River Basin.…”

“…Municipal water withdrawals and effluent discharges are maintained the same as baseline. Figure 2C; 3 The reservoir in this system (Lake Holiday) currently does not provide a guaranteed minimum outflow to the Obed River [59]; 4 Water withdrawal from Lake Holiday for the City of Crossville, Tennessee, modeled over the period of record at the 2014 average annual rate [58]; 5 Effluent discharged from the Crossville wastewater treatment plant into the Obed River downstream of Lake Holiday, modeled over the period of record using the average annual rate reported by [59]; 6 x is reservoir storage for Lake Holiday in percent; y is percent of inflow to Lake Holiday released as outflow to the Obed River.…”