Estimating Water Use in the United States A New Paradigm for the National Water-Use Information Program (2002) / Chapter Skim
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9. Conclusions and Recommendations
9. Conclusions and Recommendations
Pages 143-149
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From page 143... ...
The quality of these data, therefore, is highly variable and depends upon the interests of the state or local cooperators. For this reason there are significant differences among USGS districts in data collection and/or estimation procedures, quality assessment procedures, and data distribution and accessibility.
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From page 144... ...
Livestock and rural domestic water use involves small amounts of water that often fall below the trigger levels used in state water use data collection programs. No states routinely collect, or require reporting of, instream water needs or ecological water requirements, even in regions where such ecological estimates of water use are used in water resource allocation decisions.
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From page 145... ...
The committee also found significant potential for the NWUIP to coordinate its data collection efforts more closely with activities of other agencies and institutions in order to integrate national databases in the NWUIP. The USDA maintains a five-year Census of Agriculture, which inventories irrigated agriculture using a stratified random sampling approach similar to that suggested in this report for water use.
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From page 146... ...
Create a Water Use Science Program The NWUIP appears to be viewed as a water use accounting program by many scientists in the USGS Water Resources Division. NWUIP needs to be elevated to being an integral part of the scientific data collection and dissemination mission of the agency.
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From page 147... ...
The convergence of consistent national data sets and widely available standard technologies in geographic information systems creates a timely opportunity for USGS to improve the acquisition and management of data used to estimate national water use. Recommendation: To better support water use science, the USGS should build on existing data collection efforts to systematically integrate datasets, including those maintained by other federal and state agencies, within the data collection and water use estimation activities of the NWIUP.
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From page 148... ...
An integrative water use science program that investigates spatial and temporal patterns of water use, impacts of water use on aquatic ecosystems and the hydrologic cycle, and the sustainability, reliability, and vulnerability of water resources cannot stand alone. It needs to leverage the resources of other USGS programs.
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From page 149... ...
The sole reliance on Coop Program funds has resulted in a national program that is based on data collection procedures with variable regional coverage and weak control of the quality of the data. This is inconsistent with the Survey' s role as the nation's unbiased source of water resources information.
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