Estimating Water Use in the United States A New Paradigm for the National Water-Use Information Program (2002) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
3. Water Use Data and Their Application
3. Water Use Data and Their Application
Pages 36-67
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 36... ...
This has led to extensive mining of nonrenewable water in groundwater storage and to the importing of water from outside basin boundaries to meet water supply needs. Many regions rely heavily on water provided to reservoirs from melting winter mountain snow packs.
|
From page 37... ...
Much as debits, credits, and savings in a financial budget need to be quantified to maintain fiscal responsibility, the nation's water use needs to be comprehensively quantified within the water-budget context to ensure adequate availability of water as future water demands regionally fluctuate because of changes in climate, urban growth patterns, agricultural practices, and energy needs. Many of the other components of the water budget are well studied.
|
From page 40... ...
Usually, domestic water refers to water obtained from individual home wells or surface water supply. However, because domestic water can also be provided by public water supplies, it is distinguished from public sources in the statewide tabulation.
|
From page 42... ...
There has been little scientific evaluation of the quality of tabulated water use data provided to the USGS by state and other agencies for the national water use report that have been published every five years by the USGS. Qualitatively, water use data for public water supply and in-stream water (thermoelectric)
|
From page 43... ...
WATER USE DATA AND THEIR APPLICATION 43 least certain because of the large variability of water use in industrial applications, even with a single industrial class. That water use data throughout the country are substantially different regionally and locally adds to the general uncertainty, compounded by nonreporting of metadata (i.e., data and information about data quality)
|
From page 44... ...
Water use experts have had to resort to estimation methods for many of the water withdrawal classes because of the legal, financial, and political constraints that limit getting hard data. For example, domestic water withdrawals and livestock water use are commonly estimated by multiplying population figures by coefficients.
|
From page 45... ...
As appropriate to such a compilation, these data are most useful for characterizing regional water use trends and national changes in water use. However, without systematic scientific studies testing the reliability of the compiled data, the usefulness of the compilations is questionable.
|
From page 46... ...
Initiated some 20 years ago, the program today has matured into a comprehensive inventory of monthly data from more than 40,000 surface and groundwater withdrawal points. The program also plays a vital role in the state' s effort to manage water resources in heavily pumped regions, especially the Mississippi Alluvium aquifer in eastern Arkansas.
|
From page 47... ...
. SOURCE: USGS Arkansas District Office.
|
From page 48... ...
Water use in Pope County is very high arising from the Arkansas Nuclear One power plant, located on the Arkansas River. The trends in water use, shown in Figure 3.6, show the dominance of irrigation over public supply and also demonstrate that irrigation water withdrawals grew by approximately 50 percent from 1980 to 1995.
|
From page 50... ...
See Figure 3.5 for map legend. Data source: USGS Arkansas District Office.
|
From page 51... ...
cq ¢ a~ · · a~ cq a~ .= bC ¢ E¢~....
|
From page 52... ...
Data source: USGS Arkansas District Office. by far the most important water supply is provided by the Mississippi Alluvium, which supports 33,700 groundwater wells or 86 percent of all the wells in the state.
|
From page 54... ...
These data demonstrate that the practice used by the USGS of sampling and tabulating groundwater and surface water use separately for each usage category is justified. If the source of water supply is not considered, important information is lost even though the total water use in any category lumps together the use from surface and groundwater sources.
|
From page 56... ...
Figure 3.12 shows the resulting spatial patterns of water use intensity for surface water, groundwater, and total water use in Arkansas. In the calculation of the surface water use intensity, water use for power production was excluded because it occurs in only a relatively few locations and because it is of such a large magnitude at those locations that it dominates by far all other categories of water use.
|
From page 57... ...
water stress index (ratio of total water use intensity to annual precipitation)
|
From page 58... ...
The eight-digit cataloging units are the most widely used drainage areas for cataloging hydrologic data in the United States. There are 2,156 such units in the continental United States, of a size roughly equivalent to counties.
|
From page 59... ...
Developed nationally at a scale of 1:100,000, the National Hydrography Dataset is progressively being improved by adding high-resolution 1 :24,000-scale hydrography data in some states. The river and stream network of this dataset has been separated into reaches and labeled using a Reach Code, which is a 14-digit identifier, unique throughout the United States.
|
From page 60... ...
Similarly, point A is at number 0.38 on a river reach line within a cataloging unit drainage area. The use of percent distance in the National Hydrography Dataset as the measure location is replaced in other river addressing systems by linear measures such as river miles or kilometers from the river mouth.
|
From page 61... ...
:. it, ~ ~ 'm ~ ho ~ 'I Am, -Vote \ I'''' 1 00% 38~ 0% FIGURE 3.16 Location on a river reach, given by percent distance from the downstream end of the line.
|
From page 62... ...
When all of the surface water use points in the Arkansas database are displayed over the National Hydrography Dataset river reaches, as shown conceptually in Figure 3.18, most of the points fall on the mapped reaches, but there are some points that do not. These are points where water is being diverted from smaller rivers and streams than are depicted on 1:100,000-scale maps.
|
From page 63... ...
These datasets are relevant to the estimation of water use in the areas of public water supply, power plants, wastewater, and agriculture. Public Water Supply Database: Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS)
|
From page 64... ...
The sector notebooks, published for over 30 major industrial sectors, offer a holistic "whole-facility" approach to industry-specific manufacturing processes and to pollution issues for specific industrial sectors. The Permit Compliance System together with the sector notebooks can be used to estimate industrial water use may be estimated from the national database of permitted wastewater dischargers.
|
From page 66... ...
66 sol ·= o no ~ — C Cal Ct o Cal Cal Cal o .~ .
|
From page 67... ...
Without systematic scientific studies testing the reliability of the compiled data, the usefulness of the compilations is questionable. At present, because there is only a limited national-level quality assurance/ quality control program for most of the received data, it is difficult to ascribe confidence intervals to the data.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.