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USGS Research Aids South Florida Restoration

Water-Quality Issues

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Last updated: June 08, 2007

USGS Research Aids South Florida Restoration

Aaron Higer and Ben McPherson

Ben McPherson

Among its major research and monitoring activities in Florida, USGS is carrying out a South Florida National Water Quality Assessment Program that provides an improved scientific basis for evaluating the effectiveness of water-quality management programs and predicting the likely effects of changes in land- and water-management practices.

Members of the USGS Southern Florida National Water Quality Assessment Team include, from left, in front row, John Byrnes, Mark Zucker, Ben McPherson (Project Chief), and Anne Bradner. In back row, from left, Ron Miller, Tim Boozer, Bruce Bernard, and Robert Kent. Team members Kim Haag and David McCulloch are not in the photo.

Begun in 1994, the assessment is part of the USGS national program, which uses a regional approach to improve the understanding of environmental stresses on the nation's water supply. The national program, which includes just under 60 study units, provides a consistent description of current water-quality conditions for a large part of the nation's water resources and defines long-term trends and major factors that affect water-quality.

Communication and coordination between USGS personnel and other interested scientists and water-management organizations are important components of the National Water Quality Assessment Program. Each study-unit has a local liaison committee made up of representatives from federal, state, and local agencies, academia, and the private sector who have water-resources interests and responsibilities.

The south Florida project encompasses a 19,500-square-mile area that includes most of the southern half of the peninsula and contains a major urban complex of more than five million people. It focuses on the Kissimmee-Okeechobee-Everglades watershed, a major source of fresh water for the regional ecosystem. The watershed, which is predominantly underlain by shallow marine carbonate sediments to depths of about 20,000 feet, contains three major aquifer systems. The confined Floridan aquifer system is the principal source of water in the northern part of the study unit, but water from this system is too mineralized for most uses in the southern part of the unit. The semiconfined intermediate aquifer system, which overlies the Floridan, serves as a confining unit for the Floridan and is a source of fresh water for public supply along the Gulf Coast. The surficial aquifer system includes the highly permeable Biscayne aquifer - the principal source of potable water for southeastern Florida and an EPA-designated "sole-source" drinking water supply.

The South Florida study addresses unique environmental issues by using a multiscale, interdisciplinary approach. The study design includes analysis of historical data, surface- and ground-water assessments, ecological studies, streambed sediment, and tissue studies. Largemouth bass, or Florida gar, have been collected at 15 sites to assess organic and trace-metal contamination. The program sampled surface-water quality at seven permanent sites and more than 30 synoptic sites. It also surveyed shallow ground-water quality in citrus groves, mixed agricultural lands, residential areas, and public water supply wells in the Biscayne aquifer.

Information about the Southern Florida National Water Quality Assessment is at: http://srv3sfltpa.er.usgs.gov (see http://fl.water.usgs.gov/Sofl/)

Benjamin F. McPherson is the coordinator of the Southern Florida National Water Quality Assessment Program at the USGS Tampa Subdistrict Office.

Aaron Higer

The South Florida Ecosystem Program is one of several study areas in the national USGS Place-Based Science Program. The study area programs - in critical ecosystems such as south Florida, San Francisco Bay, and the Chesapeake Bay - enable the USGS to enhance its scientific assistance to resource managers who require improved scientific information to resolve or prevent complex resource conflicts or environmental problems in specific ecosystems. Through multi-year efforts in each study area, USGS intensifies its provision of scientific information tailored to the specific management needs of that ecosystem. The information is designed to have a direct, significant, and immediate impact on management and policy decisions.

It addresses regional or subregional issues that involve environmental resources such as water, minerals, and land. The program is multi-disciplinary and brings together scientists from appropriate disciplines to apply their diverse expertise to common problems. Disciplines include land characterization, surface modeling, geospatial database management, ground- and surface-water hydrology, geophysics, ecology, geochemistry, paleontology, hydrologic modeling, and contaminant, sediment, and nutrient dynamics.

The south Florida program, which began in fiscal year 1995, is an intergovernmental effort to reestablish and maintain the regional ecosystem. The USGS is one of the agencies that provides scientific information as part of the program. The initiative provides hydrologic, cartographic, and geologic data that relates to the mainland of south Florida, Florida Bay, and the Florida Keys and Reef ecosystems. The program complements ongoing USGS work, such as the National Water-Quality Assessment Program, the Federal-State Cooperative Program, Marine and Coastal Geology Program and Regional Geology Program, and topographic mapping/digital cartography.

Examples of the scientific information USGS provides to agencies involved in the restoration effort include: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District need USGS data and information to improve models of water flows and water quality and to predict the consequences of the restoration efforts in south Florida. Everglades National Park needs USGS information about historical environmental conditions and the frequency of fire to understand current and historical water and fire conditions, to set ecological goals for restoration, to distinguish human influences from the natural background of water fluctuations and trace-element contamination, and to provide yardsticks to measure the success of the restoration.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency need information on mercury cycling to predict changes in the availability of mercury to fish as a result of restoration. This information includes interactions of mercury with peat, algae, and dissolved organic carbon, as well as historical mercury concentrations in peat. Communities in the Florida Keys need information on nutrient seepage from ground water, provided by the USGS, to determine whether it is necessary to modify their sewage-disposal practices.

Specific information about on-going scientific studies and their results can be found on the USGS South Florida Information Access Site at http://sofia.usgs.gov A fact sheet on the South Florida Ecosystem Program is at http://sofia.usgs.gov/publications/fs/61-99/ Information on the other USGS place-based science programs is at http://sofia.usgs.gov/pbs

Aaron Higer is coordinator for the USGS South Florida Ecosystem Program.