In the 2012 President's Budget Request, the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) is terminated. As a result, all resources, databases, tools, and applications within this web site will be removed on January 15, 2012. For more information, please refer to the NBII Program Termination page.
About the NAWQA Data Warehouse:
The USGS began its NAWQA program in 1991, systematically collecting chemical, biological, and physical water quality data from 42 study units (basins) across the nation. The Data Warehouse contains and links the following data:
Chemical concentrations in water, bed sediment, and aquatic organism tissues for about 2000 chemical constituents
Biological community data for 16,000 fish, algae and invertebrate samples
Site, basin, well and network characteristics with many descriptive variables
Daily stream flow information for fixed sampling sites
Ground water levels for sampled wells
7,600 surface water sites and 8,100 wells
49,000 nutrient samples and 31,000 pesticide samples as well as 9,000 VOC samples
2,500 samples of bed sediment and aquatic organism tissues
Water and drought play important roles in the diverse ecosystems of the Mountain Prairie region. All biological organisms require water in order to function, and many of the region's animals and plants are well-adapted to the daily, seasonal, and annual cycles of this essential resource. Water serves critical roles in agriculture, industry, recreation, transportation, and maintenance of our environment, as well as our very quality of life.
Drought is a period of unusually persistant dry weather that lasts long enough to cause serious problems such as crop damage and/or water supply shortages. The severity of the drought depends upon the degree of moisture deficiency, the duration, and the size of the affected area (source: National Weather Service). A drought can be defined by the amount of precipitation in an area, by the amount of moisture in the soil, by surface and subsurface water supplies, or by water shortages affecting people.
Follow the links below and throughout the page to explore water and drought resources for the Mountain Prairie region of the United States.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Surf Your Watershed
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's "Surf Your Watershed" program integrates environmental information available by geographic units including state, watershed, county, metro area, and tribe.
The site provides access to three main databases:
1. Adopt Your Watershed, a database of watershed groups,
2. Wetlands Restoration Projects, which displays ongoing wetlands restoration,
3. Environmental Websites Database, a directory of websites dedicated to environmental issues and information.