eastern time

Description

You are in a watershed right now – all the land around you drains into a waterbody. Because of this, what we do on the land’s surface has an impact on the local waterway. A healthy watershed is vital for clean drinking water, healthy aquatic life, and outdoor recreation. The health of the local watershed can directly impact a resident’s quality of life and pocketbook (dirty water costs more to treat, and that cost is passed to the local citizens). As humans engage in agriculture, construction, and other activities, they can negatively impact the local watershed.

Each waterway is given a designated usage (for example, drinking water, if it is used as a drinking water source, or recreation, if people boat, fish, swim in it). If the water quality is such that it cannot support that designated usage, it is an impaired water. States are required to report impaired waters to the EPA, then a restoration plan is created to protect that stream. Today we are going to investigate the watershed in the National Park that you chose for your Final Project.

You will need to access the Environmental Protection Agency’s How’s My Waterway? Website at this link: https://mywaterway.epa.gov/

1. First navigate to the How’s My Waterway? Website using the link above. At Let’s Get Started, type in the name of your national park. You may also type in the name of the river system that you used in Assignment 8 here, or use an address or zip code for your park. Note that the water bodies within your park are listed on the right, along with their status (good, impaired, condition unknown). An interactive map is on the left – you can click on each waterbody to see its location and status. List here all the water bodies listed on the website, along with their status.

1. In the box on the right, note that there are tabs along the top that you can navigate through. Check out the swimming tab. Are any of the water bodies within your park assessed for swimming or boating? If yes, what are their conditions (good, impaired, condition unknown)?

1. Check out the eating fish and aquatic life tabs. Are any of the water bodies within your park assessed for eating fish and shellfish? What about for aquatic life? If yes, what are their conditions (good, impaired, condition unknown)?

1. Now select one of the water bodies that you listed above as impaired (if there were no impaired streams within your national park, search for an impaired stream downstream of the park). List the impaired water body that you selected. What is the identified issue or issues that are causing the impairment? Click on the identified issue and a text box will pop up. Briefly define the identified issue. What can someone do to reduce this issue (found under What you can do)?

1. Now select a second water body with a different identified issue that causes the impairment (you may need to go outside the park to find a second issue). List the name of the impaired stream. Briefly define the identified issue. What can someone do to reduce this issue?

1. Check out the drinking water tab. You will find more tabs within this text box. Examine the tab Who Provides the Drinking Water Here? How many public water systems serve this area (note – you can find this information at the top of the list of all the public water systems)?

1. Still on the drinking water tab, check out the tab Who Withdraws Water for Drinking Here? Is the drinking water facility source surface water or ground water? How many public water systems withdraw water from your location?

1. Check out the Identified Issues tab. What percentage of assessed waters are impaired in your location?
2. Now let’s check out water data for your river system at the USGS website: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis.
   1. First select the Current Conditions button on the left.
   2. From here, select Build Current Conditions Table.
   3. Under the Site Location box on the left, select the State/Territory box and press Submit.
   4. Use the dropdown box to find the state that your National Park is in and select it. There are lots of Available parameters. For this exercise, the Station Name and Date and Time have already been selected (that’s the 1 and 2 you see).
   5. Put a 3 in the Streamflow, ft3/s parameter box, and a 4 in the Discharge, instantaneous, ft3/s parameter box.
   6. Scroll just over 1/3^rd of the way down the page and put a 5 in Long-term mean daily streamflow, ft3/s, and a 6 in Long-term median daily streamflow, ft3/s (these are directly above the heading Water Quality Parameters).
   7. Now scroll all the way to the bottom of the page.
   8. Under Choose Output Format, select the second option – Table of sites grouped by: choose Hydrologic Unit in the dropdown box.
   9. Now press the Submit button. This will give you a list of the waterbodies within the State. Scroll through this list to find the river system you are using.
   10. Click on the site number next to the name of the water body. This will bring up a page with graphs of data. Above the graph, you are able to select the time period to graph – 7 days, 30 days, 1 year.
   11. Practice changing these options to see how the graph changes.
   12. Scroll down below the first graph to Select data to graph.
   13. Choose discharge, cubic feet per second. Discharge measures the volume of water moving down a river per unit of time. Look at the discharge in your river system over a 1-year period.
   14. Answer the following:
       1. Take a screenshot of the graph and include it here.
       2. How does the discharge of the river change over the year?
       3. When does the river have higher discharges during the year?
       4. What do you think impacts the river’s discharge?
3. The National Parks are lands that are set aside to protect the local ecosystem. Is your park as pristine as you expected it to be? Why would it be important to protect the areas within the park specifically from a watershed perspective?