Water Basics

• Hydrology Primer—What is hydrology and what do hydrologists do?
• USGS Water Science School—Find information on many aspects of water, along with pictures, data, maps, and an interactive center where you can give opinions and test your water knowledge.
  • The Water Cycle
  • Water Properties
  • Surface Water
  • Groundwater
• Aquifer Basics
• Groundwater Basics: Resources and Introductory Information
• Water Education Posters (Online only)—Cartoon posters for grades K-12 on the subjects of wetlands, water use, wastewater, navigation, groundwater, coastal hazards, watersheds, water quality, and hazardous waste.
• Science in Your Watershed— Find information about your watershed
• A Journey with Water—Educational coloring book
• Glossaries of Water Resources Terms
• A-Z Index of hydrologic terms

Selected Products of Educational Interest

The following online resources highlight popular USGS publications.

USGS Publications Warehouse—Find historic, technical, and popular publications in the searchable database of over 69,000 USGS maps, books, and other publications.

USGS Library—The largest earth science library in the world... providing information to other organizations and individuals in the areas of geology, hydrology, cartography, biology, and related fields.

Groundwater

• What is Ground Water?
• Ground Water —This booklet describes how groundwater occurs and how its quality is assessed.
• Ground Water and the Rural Homeowner—This booklet provides rural homeowners with a basic but comprehensive description of groundwater.
• Ground-Water Availability in the United States—This report examines what is known about the Nation's ground-water availability and outlines a program of study by the U.S. Geological Survey Groundwater Resources Program to improve our understanding of groundwater availability in major aquifers across the Nation.
• Sustainability of Ground-Water Resources—This publication illustrates the hydrologic, geologic, and ecological concepts that must be considered to assure the wise and sustainable use of our precious ground-water resources.
• Ground Water and Surface Water: A Single Resource—Many natural processes and human activities affect the interactions of groundwater and surface water. The purpose of this report is to present our current understanding of the interaction of groundwater and surface water.
• Water Availability for the Western United States - Key Scientific Challenges—In the Western United States, the availability of water has become a serious concern for many communities. This report reviews the quality, availability, use, and sustainability of both groundwater and surface water in the western United States.

Floods

• Floods and Flood Plains—This easy-to-understand fact sheet describes why floods occur and discusses the basics about flood-plain designation.
• Large Floods in the United States: Where They Happen and Why—This publication describes the geographic and climatic factors that influence the occurrence and impacts of large floods in the United States.
• The 100-Year Flood— What is a 100-year flood and why don't these floods happen every 100 years? This simple fact sheet describes the statistics behind the designation and explains why regular measurements are essential.

Drought

• Drought—This fact sheet defines and explains the drier-than-normal conditions that result in water-related problems.

Streamgaging

• Streamgages—Measuring the Pulse of our Nation's Rivers
• From the River to You: USGS Real-Time Streamflow Information

Water Quality

• A Primer on Water Quality
• The Quality of Our Nation's Waters - Nutrients and Pesticides—This report presents insights on nutrients and pesticides in water and on pesticides in bed sediment and fish tissue.
• Pesticides in the Nation's Streams and Ground Water, 1991-2001—This report is one of a series of publications, The Quality of Our Nation's Waters, that describe major findings of the NAWQA Program on water-quality issues of regional and national concern.
• Herbicides in Midwestern Reservoir Outflows, 1992-93—This fact sheet describes results from sampling midwestern reservoirs and streams.

Water Use

• Water Use in the United States—Find out how we use water every day.

Multimedia Resources

Science Lectures

• USGS Online Lectures - Hydrology—A compilation of selected videotaped lectures made at the USGS. All of these lectures should be suitable for a viewing audience ranging from the general public to undergraduate-level students.
• USGS Water Resources Seminar Series—Video archive (2003 to present) of lectures given at the USGS offices in Menlo Park, California, on a variety of water-related topics. Most of these lectures are designed for a technical, scientific audience.
• An Overview of the USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Science Center in Wisconsin—Video of scientists at work in the office, lab, and field. Many of them describe the kind of work they do in the Great Lakes area and Mississipi River Basin and why it's important.

Lakes and Coastal Areas

• Changing Size of the Great Salt Lake in Utah—Time-lapse elevation change movie for the Great Salt Lake in Utah covering 1972 to 1996.
• Louisiana Coastal Land Loss—Narrated animations of past and predicted wetland loss from 1932 to 2050 on the Louisiana coast.
• Sea-Level Rise—Time-lapse animations showing maps of sea-level uprising at locations around the globe and the population numbers that could be impacted.
• Fly-By Movies of Shaded Relief Bathymetry in Lake Tahoe—Flight over Lake Tahoe, above and below the water.
• Fly-By Movies from Selected Seafloor Studies—Animated fly-by movies of the bathymetry at Lake Tahoe, Crater Lake, Gulf of Mexico, and the Los Angeles margin.
  

Groundwater

• Simulated Groundwater Route through Porous Limestone—3-D animated fly-through simulating a hypothetical route that groundwater would take through a porous limestone from the Biscayne aquifer in Florida.
• Water Level Change in the Mojave Ground-Water Basin—Animated models of changes in groundwater levels in the Mojave Basin, 1999 to 2019.

Floods

• Mississippi River Flooding in Wisconsin, 2001—Several short videos of the Mississippi River flood in Wisconsin in April, 2001. No narration.
• Exploring Storm Surge—Preparedness movie made in 1995 about the dangers of storm surges that are associated with hurricanes.

Water Quality

• North Carolina Water Sampling Activities—Numerous 10- to 30-second video clips showing scientists at work sampling in the Albemarle-Pamlico drainage basin in North Carolina and Virginia. Water-quality sampling, macroinvertebrate sampling, and more.

Water Use

• Water Use Trends in the Southwestern United States, 1950-1990—Three animations of water use (surface water and groundwater) in the conterminous United States for irrigation, public supplies, and total withdrawal.
• Real-time Water Levels for Reservoirs in Puerto Rico—Nearly 45 percent of public water supply is provided by the reservoirs of Puerto Rico. Learn about the long-term program to monitor reservoir levels, water quality, and sedimentation in water supply reservoirs.

Additional USGS Multimedia Resources

• USGS CoreCast—CoreCast brings you straight science insight on natural hazards, climate change, satellite imagery and monitoring, water quality, human health and wildlife disease, and much more. Tune into CoreCast. It's natural science from the inside out.
• USGS Videos and Animation

Opportunities

• Careers in Science—Web resources and videos about USGS science and careers.
• Internships, Employment Opportunities, and Research Grants—See what opportunities are available for undergraduate and graduate students, and for faculty to participate in USGS science.
• Occupations in Hydrology—Qualifications for hydrologists and hydrologic technicians

Other Water Education Resources of Interest

• USGS Education Resources—Discover selected online resources to support teaching, learning, education (K-12), and university-level inquiry and research.
• Surf Your Watershed—U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's service to help citizens locate environmental information about their local regions.
• Know Your Watershed—A primer provided by the Conservation Technology Information Center
• Get Informed About Groundwater—From the Groundwater Foundation, information on groundwater basics, the hydrologic cycle, threats to groundwater, and protection efforts.