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8 The Future of NAWQA
Pages 203-214

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From page 203...
... From its earliest concept to the current plans for the future, three goals have driven NAWQA's design and development: (1) status to provide a nationally consistent description of the current water quality conditions for a large part of the nation's water resources; (2)
From page 204...
... As discussed in Chapter 1, in concert with NAWQA leadership, the committee was asked to spend considerable time considering and discussing NAWQA Planning Team (NPT) and NAWQA Cycle II Implementation Team (NIT)
From page 205...
... Geological Survey on opportunities to improve the NAWQA program. The committee will conduct an initial assessment of general accomplishments in the NAWQA program to date by engaging in discussions with program scientists and others such as users of NAWQA products, and by reviewing USGS internal reports on opportunities to improve NAWQA.
From page 206...
... Many sound approaches proposed by NAWQA staff have already been developed in Cycle I and should provide a solid foundation for subsequent development and implementation in Cycle II particularly in key areas such as contaminant fate and transport, groundwater-surface water interactions, and stream ecosystem studies. These are important issues that should be priorities for targeted studies, as discussed in Chapter 5.
From page 207...
... . As discussed in Chapter 2, NAWQA has done an excellent job of iteratively utilizing hydrologic setting regions, coupled with a linear programming approach and expert judgment-based semiquantitative analyses to optimize the reduced number of study units planned for Cycle II.
From page 208...
... For example, how representative are the study units of the petrochemical and forest products industries? Such questions might have to be asked and answered for some specific data and information uses.
From page 209...
... In addition, the committee strongly recommends that NAWQA take a leadership role in addressing sediments in surface waters as a future national synthesis topic. This is a critical national water quality issue that NAWQA is well suited to address.
From page 210...
... The committee fully expects that NAWQA will continue to exhibit foresight and take a lead in studying emerging water quality issues and contaminants and will avoid expending unwarranted resources on a contaminant-of-the-day approach. As another exemplary balance issue, the committee notes the very important contributions NAWQA can and should make in biological assessments and ecological synthesis in surface waters, yet the committee also strongly recommends that NAWQA not embark on an ecotoxicology program (Chapter 5~.
From page 211...
... The NAWQA program is an excellent example of these conclusions and recommendations. NAWQA is providing key national leadership in monitoring, reporting, and assessing the quality of surface water and groundwater resources across the nation.
From page 212...
... As noted previously, the committee has also endorsed the use of system modeling as an important tool for NAWQA and has recommended some redirection of model development effort. New computational resources can certainly increase model capabilities, but the committee feels that new efforts should focus on parsimonious models with more realistic data requirements that can be widely used and provide more useful information.
From page 213...
... While NAWQA has done an exemplary job of downsizing to 42 planned study units for Cycle II, it cannot continue to downsize and still be considered a national water quality assessment. Although it could certainly be redesigned, this would likely undo the basis for assessment of trends and waste a decade or more of effort.
From page 214...
... 214 OPPORTUNITIES TO IMPROVE THE USGS NAWQA PROGRAM ronment. Current and future demands already exceed the capacity of NAWQA, but it is the hope of the committee that policy makers, politicians, and program managers can strike the necessary balance that will allow NAWQA to continue to provide important water quality data and information for the nation.


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