Water Resources of Texas

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Threatened and Endangered Stations

Spotlight on USGS News

Spotlight on Texas Projects

The Texas Water Science Center conducts hydrologic projects that address a wide variety of water-resources issues, including water supply, groundwater contamination, nutrient loading in streams, effects of land use on water quality, and basic hydrologic data collection.

All Texas Projects

Featured Project:

Contaminants in Streambed and Suspended-Sediments in Bexar County

Elevated concentrations of sediment-associated contaminants are typically associated with urban areas, and San Antonio is the seventh most populous city in the U.S. During 200709, the USGS collected streambed sediment samples during baseflow and suspended-sediment samples during stormwater runoff at 20 sites in the Medio Creek, Medina River, Elm Creek, Martinez Creek, Chupaderas Creek, Leon Creek, Salado Creek, and San Antonio River watersheds. The samples were analyzed for major and trace elements and organic compounds including halogenated compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Concentrations were mostly low compared to consensus-based sediment-quality guidelines and compared to samples collected during previous USGS studies in the Austin and Fort Worth areas. The overall degree of sediment contamination was highest in samples collected from four sites in Leon Creek and one site in the San Antonio River.

Fact Sheet | Spanish language version

Podcasts/Videos

Paint it Black
by Douglas Harned
Pete Van Metre and Barbara Mahler discuss an experiment to assess release of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) from coal tar pavement sealant after application on a parking lot.

Watch the video at vimeo.com

Featured Mapping Application

Announcing Streamer - Developed and Powered by the USGS Texas Water Science Center

On July 17, 2013, the Texas Water Science Center and National Atlas of the United States announced the launch of Streamer - a new National Atlas Dynamic Map that allows anyone to trace up and down America's major streams and to learn a little about the surface waters, people, and places along each trace. Streamer lets you navigate rivers in the United States the way other interactive maps help you drive your vehicle from one place to another. Unlike our nations road network, which provides many choices for traveling between two locations, Americas surface waters are somewhat like a network of one-way streets. You can certainly navigate upstream, but all water flows one way: downhill. Use Streamer to trace downstream along that downhill path or use Streamer to trace upstream to highlight rivers at higher elevations that flow to your starting point.

In the first 5 days since the release of Streamer, the USGS Texas Water Science Center has seen more than 35,000 visits to the Dynamic Map, 120,000 stream traces performed, with over 1 billion river miles traced and counting....

Streamer is directly accessible from the National Atlas homepage. The National Atlas homepage now includes an animation that gives you an overview of the application and its exciting new capabilities!

Data Highlights

2011 Water Data Now Available (Quick look:
Beginning with water year 2006, the annual water data product took on a new format different from the previous report series. The basic product is a Site Data Sheet that serves to publish all data collected during the water year at any given site.

For more information about this topic, click now. )

The 2011 USGS Water Data Report ( ) is now available to provide a snapshot of water conditions for a given year. The report includes text and map interfaces that can be used to identify and access an area of interest, locate sites where water data were collected for various Water Years

Instantaneous Data Archive (IDA) (Quick look:
Since 1889 the United States Geological Survey has collected continuous stage, discharge, and other instantaneous time-series data on the nations rivers and streams. These time-series data have been and are typically recorded at intervals ranging from 5 to 60 minutes. These instantaneous data have been processed into and published as various daily values, such as the daily maximum, minimum, and/or mean. Because the published record are daily values, the original instantaneous data have not historically been officially approved, published, or made widely available. This web site has been established to make available as much historical instantaneous data from USGS data collection stations as possible. Although this site currently serves instantaneous discharge (streamflow) data only, work is planned to extend it to other time-series parameters in the future.

For more information about this topic, click now. )

The Instantaneous Data Archive( ) makes available as much intra-day streamflow data and historical instantaneous data continuous (measurements from every 5 to every 60 minutes), as possible, often several years' worth of data.