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Upper Snake River Basin NAWQA Groundwater Study

Status: Active
Principal Investigator: Kenneth Skinner

# Photo taken: Date
Photo by Kenneth Skinner, USGS
The upper Snake River Basin has been part the USGS NAWQA program since 1991. During cycle 1 (1991-2001), an interdisciplinary study included water chemistry, hydrology, land use, and established a baseline understanding of water-quality conditions in the study units. The primary objectives of the groundwater chemistry component of study were to assess the regional water chemistry of the study unit by establishing sites in Study-Unit Surveys (SUS) and to determine whether the chemical constituents in groundwater were related to specific land uses by establishing wells in Land-Use Surveys (LUS). Samples for SUS sites were collected from irrigation, stock, domestic, and public supply wells. Samples for LUS sites were collected mostly from domestic wells completed in a single aquifer.

During the second decade or cycle (2001-2012), monitoring continues for only two of the LUS sites: the A&B and the Jerome/Gooding. Findings will help to establish trends at selected groundwater sites that have been consistently monitored for more than a decade, and fill in gaps characterizing water-quality conditions. The use of groundwater flow and transport modeling will help improve the understanding of water-quality conditions as well as contamination sources and movement within the study unit. Comparisons of conditions and trends will continue on the National scale and now regionally in the Regional Assessment of Groundwater Quality in Principal Volcanic Aquifers of the Western United States (WEVO). WEVO includes the USNK along with the Columbia Plateau basin-fill and basaltic-rock aquifer study unit (CCYK) in Washington and the Hawaiian volcanic-rock aquifers study unit (OAHU) in Hawaii.