Progress toward establishing a national assessment of water availability and use

Abstract

Many reports have recognized the need for a National Water Census (Water Census) for the United States, and have called upon the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to undertake this challenge. The United States Congress, in Subtitle F of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (Public Law (P.L.) 111-11), established a "blueprint" for a national assessment of water availability and use that outlines the information needed from a Water Census. This report, "Progress Toward Establishing a National Assessment of Water Availability and Use," describes the initial steps taken by the USGS to institute a Water Census and the progress the USGS has made toward establishing such a Census. It explains, for both Congress and the public, the steps the USGS will take to fulfill the requirements of Subtitle F of P.L. 111-11, and describes plans for the future of the Water Census. This report presents the history and background of and the need for a Water Census. It describes the initial steps taken toward accomplishing the Water Census, which is designed to systematically provide information that will allow resource managers to assess the water availability of the Nation. The report explains how the Water Census is being organized around the unifying theme of a water budget, and explains why water budgets are critical for assessing water availability for the Nation. The report describes the importance of understanding, assessing, and delivering information about the uncertainty of water-availability information, as well as the collaboration and coordination with other agencies and organizations that is essential for the Water Census to succeed. The report explains the planned regional framework for presenting water-availability data through a set of geographic focus area studies and the planned national framework for providing uniform information on water-budget components across the country through topical area studies. The report also explains how the USGS will incorporate water-quality information into the water-availability analysis. Finally, the report describes the information management and delivery activities that are necessary for the goals of the Water Census to be achieved. v

The USGS Water Availability and Use Science Program: Needs, Establishment, and Goals of a Water Census

“…The geographic focus area studies provide opportunities to test and improve approaches for quantifying water‐budget components and pilot the application of regional water budgets to stakeholder identified water‐management challenges (Alley et al ., ). These studies also provide an opportunity to inform and “ground truth” the methods and applications of the topical studies with local information.…”

Bias correction of Simulated Historical Daily Streamflow at Ungauged Locations by Using Independently Estimated Flow-Duration Curves

“…Over the past 15 years research into simulation of historical streamflow has increased. In addition to ongoing international efforts, the U.S. Geological Survey has 20 embarked upon a National Water Census of the United States (Alley et al, 2013) seeking to quantify hydrology across the country to improve water use and security. However, regardless of the method used for the simulation, uncertainty will always remain and may result in some distributional bias (Farmer and Vogel, 2016).…”

Accelerating advances in continental domain hydrologic modeling

“…Global or continental data sets of water management data are often not available at the resolution of the water management practices. While a national effort is underway to provide water use information at catchment units derived at this level of detail [Alley et al, 2013], this goal will not be realized for some time. In other countries and continents, water management data are collated from many regulatory agencies and supplied in different formats, which complicates their application in hydrologic models.…”

“…To this end, hydrologic information at the continental and global scale is critically needed to inform water allocation in international, national, and large river basins [e.g., United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 2014], to achieve global water security [Griffiths et al, 2013], for national water assessments [Alley et al, 2013], to provide a consistent approach to evaluating water resources [Hering et al, 2010;Laniak et al, 2013], to provide a foundation for international flood policy [European With this myriad of complex science questions and pressing societal issues, the hydrology community has evolved into several modeling communities that emphasize different aspects of the hydrologic cycle and, therefore, provide focused modeling efforts to address a subset of these questions. There is now a level of maturity among the respective communities such that convergence toward a collective, transformational achievement is at hand: the realization of continental domain hydrologic models capable of addressing problems of practical importance.…”