134 Hydrogeology II: Groundwater Management

Tuesday, 6 November 2012
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
212AB

A GROUND WATER MONITORING NETWORK FOR THE UNITED STATES

Paper number: 134-2
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 8:05 AM – 8:20 AM

Authors

Abstract

Ground-water monitoring is conducted by many entities in the U.S. for a variety of purposes, yet a fully-coordinated nationwide system has remained elusive. The federal Advisory Committee on Water Information Subcommittee on Ground Water has designed a National Ground Water Monitoring Network (NGWMN) to provide the information necessary for the planning, management, and development of ground-water to meet current and future human water needs, and ecosystem requirements. The NGWMN will help provide the data necessary for effective management of principal and major aquifers in the U.S. The NGWMN is a collaborative effort through Federal, Tribal, State, nongovernmental organization, private industry, and academia volunteers. The NGWMN is populated by partner data providers who must meet NGWMN requirements and evaluate their wells and the associated data under those requirements. This approach makes use of existing monitoring, avoids duplication of effort, and identifies monitoring gaps.

Six states completed a pilot phase of the NGWMN in 2011, demonstrating that a collaborative NGWMN is feasible. Wells were selected and monitoring data were merged successfully from 10 different state agencies and the USGS through a new internet data portal (http://acwi.gov/sogw). The portal provides a map interface for compiling and distributing groundwater levels and quality, lithology, well construction, and associated metadata to the public, making use of existing data models such as GWML, WQX, and WaterML2.0. This is achieved through a centrally-managed well registry, access to participating data systems, and mediation software that transforms native data into a common aggregated format.

The NGWMN approach provides a broad framework for a national- and regional-scale groundwater network while incorporating local hydrogeologic expertise via the well selection process. Data providers maintain ownership of their data and control which data are exposed. Full implementation of the NGWMN will provide many benefits, including a single, consistent dataset from which to evaluate the status of the Nation’s aquifers and shared interstate groundwater resources, an opportunity to share data among state agencies, and an impetus for a critical review of field and data-management procedures by data providers.