A s part of development of a regional source water protection plan, in 2015–2016, the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources performed a technical review of existing hydrogeology studies in Curry and Roosevelt counties in east-central New Mexico. Additionally, groundwater quality was tested in several wells, and groundwater levels were examined to provide up-to-date information on the availability of groundwater in the region. This report describes the results of the hydrogeologic review and findings from the groundwater study.
NASA.gov overview page including many topics related to earth science and research. Topics include: climate change, ozone, water pollution, environmental hazards, citizen science, environmental monitoring and impact studies.
Find out more about how the environment may be affecting your health with this easy to use tool that lets you see health and environmental information in one place. Learn about environmental health issues in your community and what you can do to protect yourself and your family. Use this website to answer questions about air quality, drinking water, cancer, and a wide variety of other topics.
Three years following the Gold King Mine (GKM) spill that released approximately 11 million liters of metal-laden mine drainage into the Animas River, the scientific community is still evaluating the effects of this acute environmental impact in the context of a chronically mineaffected region. People living within the region affected by the spill had two principal concerns in its aftermath: is the water safe and what are the spill effects on the plants and fish consumed by humans? These are related issues, and perhaps not easy to answer. The work reported here aims to answer the second question regarding spill effects on biota, while appreciating that doing so requires a sophisticated understanding of chemical element cycling and the interactions among the physical and biological components of the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems within the influence of the Animas and San Juan Rivers.
The data set contains stream water concentrations of herbicides and nutrients for 153 sites in the northern Missouri/southern Iowa region from 1994 to 1995. The data are available in Microsoft Excel 2010 format. Sheet 1 (Metadata) of the file contains supporting information regarding the length of record, site locations, parameters measured, concentrations units, method detection limits, describes the meaning of zero and blank cells, defines the major land resource areas (MLRAs) of the region, and provides a link to the U. S. Geological Survey discharge data. Sheet 2 (Site names and locations) has a list of the site names by MLRA, river system, and site name. It also contains site locations, provided as Universal Transverse Mercator coordinates, drainage areas, and indicates which sites were co-located at U. S. Geological Survey gauge sites. Sheet 3 (Concentration Data) contains data for 15 herbicide and nutrient analytes along with the corresponding site name, river system, and MLRA. Atrazine concentrations in Goodwater Creek Experimental Watershed (GCEW) were shown to be among the very highest of any watershed in the United States based on comparisons using the national Watershed Regressions for Pesticides (WARP) model and by direct comparison with the 112 watersheds used in the development of WARP. The herbicide data collected in GCEW are documented at plot, field, and watershed scales. This 20-yr-long (1991-2010) effort was augmented with a spatially broad effort within the Central Mississippi River Basin encompassing 12 related claypan watersheds in the Salt River Basin, two cave streams on the fringe of the Central Claypan Areas in the Bonne Femme watershed, and 95 streams in northern Missouri and southern Iowa. The research effort on herbicide transport has highlighted the importance of restrictive soil layers with smectitic mineralogy to the risk of transport vulnerability. Near-surface soil features, such as claypans and argillic horizons, result in greater herbicide transport than soils with high saturated hydraulic conductivities and low smectitic clay content.