This is a coverage of the boundary and code used for the U.S. Geological Survey National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program Study-Unit investigation for the Delaware River Basin.
The National Water-Quality Assessment Program is designed to describe the status and trends in the quality of the Nation's ground- and surface-water resources and to provide a sound understanding of the natural and human factors that affect the quality of these resources (Leahy and others, 1990). A "Study Unit" is a major hydrologic system in which NAWQA studies are focused. Study Units are geographically defined by a combination of ground- and surface-water features (Gilliom and others, 1995). As part of the NAWQA program, Study-Unit investigations were planned for 60 areas throughout the Nation to provide a framework for national and regional water-quality assessments (Leahy and others, 1990). The 60 planned Study-Units were divided into three groups of 20. Each group would be intensively studied on a rotational basis with 20 studies beginning in fiscal year 1991 (FY 1991 runs from October 1990-September 1991), 20 more studies beginning in fiscal year 1994 (October 1993-September 1994), and the final 20 studies beginning in fiscal year 1997 (October 1996-September 1997). Each study cycle would span 10 years. In 1996, the number of Study-Units was scaled back to 59 when two of the original 60 Study Units combined. Also, because of budgetary restraints, some of the original planned Study Units have been scheduled to start later than originally planned and others have not even been scheduled to start yet. This coverage contains the boundaries for the 57 Study Units within the conterminous United States, excluding the High Plains Regional Ground Water-Study, which was conceived in late 1997. The coverage also includes the name, starting date, and NAWQA standard abbreviation of each Study Unit plus various codes to help display the data. This data set is used primarily to display the location of NAWQA Study Units and for analysis of data at the national scale. It is not recommended for either local or regional analysis due to the small scale of most of the features.
Originally, Study-Unit boundaries in this coverage were composed of 1:2,000,000-scale hydrologic unit boundaries (Allord, 1992) and state boundaries (Negri, 1994). As the NAWQA project has progressed and Study-Unit Investigations have gotten underway, many Study-Unit boundaries have been modified. In addition, Study Units have enhanced their boundary coverages with features at higher resolutions. As these modifications are made, Study Units submit their new boundary coverages to National Synthesis teams, who are responsible for summarizing the results from all of the Study Units, and the changes are incorporated into this coverage. As a result, this coverage is composed of linear features at various scales (for example, 1:100,000, 1:250,000), but the majority remain at the 1:2,000,000 scale. The original version of this coverage was generated by the the USGS Cartographic and Publishing Program (CAPP) in Madison, Wisconsin, in the fall of 1991. The procedures used to create this coverage are described below. Each NAWQA Study Unit was asked for a description of their boundary definition. Once this information was gathered, CAPP created the coverage by extracting digital features from the 1:2,000,000 Hydrologic Unit boundaries coverage and the 1:2,000,000 state boundaries coverage. Since the majority of Study-Unit boundaries are defined from hydrologic unit boundaries, most of the features were directly copied from the Hydrologic Units coverage. An exception to this was the boundary defining the Georgia-Florida Coastal Plain Study Unit where the northern boundary was defined by the northern edge of the Florida Aquifer. To incorporate this boundary into the coverage, the aquifer boundary was digitized from the U.S. Geological Survey's "Ground-Water Atlas of the United States", HA-730 (G) (Miller, 1990). In November 1991, responsibility for maintaining the coverage was transferred to NAWQA's National Synthesis staff. Major milestones in the development of the coverage and various revisions to the coverage are listed under the Lineage section. Reviews_Applied_to_Data -- The NAWQA Program has used the coverage for various analyses and displays and for various published reports, for example, Leahy and Thompson (1994) and Gilliom and others (1995). The coverage is reviewed by one of the NAWQA National Synthesis GIS staff members prior to release. Related_Spatial_and_Tabular_Data_Sets: Alaska (Cook Inlet) and Hawaii (Oahu) NAWQA Study-Unit boundaries are maintained in separate data sets. The High Plains Regional Ground-Water Study boundary is in a separate data set. Cook, Oahu, and High Plains study boundaries should be used with this data set to give the full picture of NAWQA Study Units nationwide. References_Cited -- Allord, G.J., 1992, 1:2,000,000 Hydrologic Unit map of the conterminous United States, Version 1.1.2. Available through the internet at <URL:http://water.usgs.gov/lookup/getmeta?huc2m>. Gilliom, R.J., Alley, W.M., and Gurtz, M.E., 1995, Design of the National Water-Quality Assessment Program--Occurrence and distribution of water-quality conditions: U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1112, U.S. Geological Survey, Sacramento, California, 33 p. Available through the internet at <URL:http://water.usgs.gov/public/pubs/circ1112/>. Leahy, P.P., Rosenshein, J.S., and Knopman, D.S., 1990, Implementation plan for the National Water-Quality Assessment Program: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 90-174. U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia, 10 p. Leahy, P.P. and Thompson, T.H., 1994, National Water-Quality Assessment Program: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 94-70, 4 p. Available through the internet at <URL:http://wwwrvares.er.usgs.gov/nawqa/NAWQA.OFR94-70.html>. Miller, James A., 1990, Ground water atlas of the United States-Segment 6, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina: U.S. Geological Survey Hydrologic Atlas Hydrologic Investigations Atlas-730-G, 28 p. Information about the Ground Water Atlas is available at <URL:http://wwwcapp.er.usgs.gov/publicdocs/gwa>. Nebert, Douglas D. and Steeves, P.A., 1994, Digital map file of hydrologic unit boundaries for the conterminous United States processed from 1:100,000- and 1:250,000-scale U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Information Retrieval and Analysis System (GIRAS) data files. U.S. Geological Survey Open File Report 94-326. Available on the internet through <URL:http://water.usgs.gov/lookup/getmeta?huc250k>. Negri, M., 1994, 1:2,000,000 Digital map of state boundaries of the conterminous United States. Available through the internet at <http://water.usgs.gov/lookup/getspatial?states2m>.
Current as of publication date.
Accuracy is good at 1:2,000,000 or smaller in most cases. The Study-Unit source maps come from various sources and scales.
11 Campus Boulevard, Suite 200
See Entity_Attribute_Information
Where present, is described with each attribute defined in the Entity and Attribute Section.
Polygon and chain-node topology present.
See supplemental information.
Version 1.0 - Received NAWQA coverage from Greg Allord, Madison, WI.
Version 1.1 - Added item USBND to .AAT for plotting purposes only.
Version 1.2 - Updated three Study-Unit boundaries: 1) Modified Red River of the North to include portion in Canada. A file containing latitude/longitude coordinates was used in determining the new northern boundary. 2) Replaced Ozark Plateau Study Unit with exported coverage from Ozark Plateau Study Unit staff. 3) Excluded the area that defines HUC 02030102 from Hudson River Basin Study Unit.
Version 1.3 - Updated two Study-Unit boundaries: 1) Updated Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Basin with an exported coverage from ACFB Study Unit. (Source scale: 1:250,000.) 2) Modified Nevada Basin and Range (southern portion) to exclude most of eastern area defined by HUC 15010005.
Version 1.4 - Added item CANADA to .AAT and to .PAT for plotting purposes only.
Version 1.5 - Updated Study-Unit boundaries: 1) Updated Lower Susquehanna Study-Unit boundary. It now includes portion of the area defined by HUC 02060002. 2) Modified northeast section of the Willamette Study Unit with an exported coverage from Willamette Study Unit. 3) Replaced Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Basin boundary with an exported coverage. 4) Modified labels for Long Island and New Jersey Coastal Plain Study Unit.
Version 1.6 - Replaced Ozark Plateau Study-Unit boundary with an exported coverage.
Version 1.7 - Modified two Study-Unit boundaries: 1) Eliminated area defined by HUC 05120209 from White River Basin Study Unit. 2) Replaced Central Oklahoma Study-Unit boundary with an exported coverage from Central Oklahoma Study Unit.
Version 1.8 - Replaced Ozark Plateau Study-Unit boundary with an exported coverage.
Version 1.9 - Deleted HUC 18040003 from San Joaquin-Tulare Basin Study Unit.
Version 2.0 - Various changes to Study-Unit boundaries have been incorporated into the coverage.
Version 3.0 - Study Units supplied new boundaries for Southern Florida, Great Salt Lake, Upper Colorado, and Sacramento. Name of Puget Sound Basin and Lower Illinois River Basin Study Units were changed.
Version 3.1 - HUCs 06020001, 06020002, 06020003 were added to the Upper Tennessee River Basin Study Unit. We used the 1:2,000,000 HUC boundaries except where they coincided with the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Basin. Along the ACFB, we used the ACFB boundary originally in the coverage.
Version 3.2 - The entire Lower Susquenhanna Study-Unit boundary was replaced by a coverage supplied by Steve Siwiec. (The most noticeable change occurred in the southeastern corner of the Study Unit.) As a result, the boundaries for the adjacent Study Units adjacent (Potomac, Allegheny-Monongahela and Delaware River) were slightly modified.
Version 3.3 - Expanded Lake Erie-Lake St. Clair to include HUCs 4090001-5 and 4120101-3 per Dennis Finnegan.
Version 3.3 - Expanded South Central Texas to include surface water drainage to the coast using coverage from Jim Bisese.
Version 3.3 - Minor change to Central Arizona Basins boundary. New boundary from Julie Rees.
Version 3.3 - Replaced San Joaquin-Tulare Study-Unit boundary with a coverage provided by Jo Ann Gronberg and the Sacramento Study-Unit boundary with a coverage from Donna Knifong. The portion of the boundary shared with Nevada Basin and Range was NOT replaced. The difference between the new boundaries and the old boundaries is very small. The new boundaries are at the 1:250,000k-scale. Part of the Sacramento Delta was modified to match the Sacramento Study-Unit boundary.
Version 3.3 - Changed abbreviation for Northern New England Basins from NHME to NNEB.
Version 3.3 - Minor change to Allegheny-Monongahela Study-Unit boundary using enhanced boundary from Mary Mulkerrin. ALMN's boundary overrode Potomac's and Lower Susquehanna's western boundary.
Version 3.3 - Replaced Upper Tennessee and Lower Tennessee boundaries with coverage from Joe Connell. Lower Tennessee expanded out a little into Upper Tennessee.
Version 3.3 - Northwestern portion of Upper Mississippi has expanded out to Red River of the North. Paul Hanson provided a new Upper Mississippi boundary coverage for update. The boundary common with Red River of the North has been replaced with the new Upper Mississippi boundary.
Version 3.3 - Enhanced Red River of the North boundary (EXCEPT portion common with Upper Mississippi) with coverage from Dave Lorenz.
Version 4.0 - Changes arose during the effort to prioritize the FY 1997 Study Units. Expanded former Chicot-Evangeline to include Lake Pontchartrain with coverage from John Lovelace. The new Study Unit is called Acadian-Pontchartrain and the abbreviation is ACAD.
Version 4.0 - Changes arose during the effort to prioritize the FY 1997 Study Units. Expanded Mobile River and Tributaries with coverage from Darrell Lambet.
Version 4.0 - Changes arose during the effort to prioritize the FY 1997 Study Units. Edited Great and Little Miami River Basins to remove parts not in Great/Little Miami river basins. Based mostly on 1:2,000,000 HUC boundaries. Added area containing Cincinnati (from north bank of Ohio river and beyond), using the 1:2,000,000 streams. Rod Sheets okayed.
Version 4.0 - Changes arose during the effort to prioritize the FY 1997 Study Units. Replaced Kentucky River Basin with 1:24,000 coverage from Robert Forbes.
Version 4.0 - Changes arose during the effort to prioritize the FY 1997 Study Units. Expanded Yellowstone River Basin to include Bighorn River.
Version 4.0 - Changes arose during the effort to prioritize the FY 1997 Study Units. Removed Central Oklahoma and Central High Plains. Replaced them with two new areas: Middle Arkansas River Basin and Canadian-Cimarron River Basins. The new coverages were extracted mostly from the 1:250,000 HUC coverage. Part of the boundary came from an 11-digit HUC coverage. HUC 11060006050 was added to Canadian-Cimarron area and removed from Middle Arkansas so that all of the Keystone Reservoir was included in the Canadian-Cimarron. Original coverages were supplied by Jamie Schlottmann Norvell. The new boundaries replaced those of Rio Grande, Southern High Plains, Upper Arkansas, and Kansas where they were adjacent to the existing boundaries.
Version 4.1 - Northwestern portion of Mississippi Embayment boundary was expanded by adding HUC 7140107 and the western portion of HUC 11010014; Northern New England Basins and Southeaster New England Basins merged into one Study Unit - New England Coastal Basins (NECB), scheduled to begin in fiscal year 1997.
Version 4.2 - Northern Rockies Intermontane Basins, Great Salt Lake, Southern High Plains - all of which were originally '94 Study Units - have become '97 Study Units. Kentucky, Canadian-Cimmarron, Upper Arkansa, Kansas, North Platte, and Cheyenne - all formerly '97 Study Units - no longer have a scheduled date. The latter set of Study Units are identified as GROUP 4 Study Units.
Version 4.3 - Item NAWQA was renumbered to reflect the merging of Northern New England Basins and Southeast New England Basins.
Version 4.4 - Minor revision to Upper Tennessee. The Study-Unit boundary was replaced with the basin boundary for station 03568000, which is the integrator site for the entire Upper Tennessee. Removed Lake Okeechobee from Southern Florida Study Unit, since no other lakes are delineated separately.
Version 4.5 - Replaced South Central Texas with enhanced boundary coverage from Lu Tan; replaced Connecticut with enhanced boundary coverage from Pete Steeves.
Version 4.6 - Expanded item NAME in .PAT from 40 characters to 50 characters so full Study-Unit names (with no abbreviations) could fit into this field.
Version 4.7 - Changed Delmarva and Yakima from group 3 to group 4 in accordance with email from Bill Wilber.
Version 5 - Incorporated new boundaries for UIRB and LIRB using coverags supplied by the Study Units. The LIRB boundary was higher resolution than the UIRB boundary, so the LIRB boundary had priority where the two shared a boundary. The WMIC boundary was replaced where it was coincident with UIRB. Changed Study-Unit starting dates to match recent programmatic changes within NAWQA. Group 4 = Planned to begin in FY 99 (DLMV, YAKI) Group 5 = Unscheduled (CHEY, KNTY, UARK) Group 6 = Unscheduled, overlap the High Plains study (CACI, KANS, MARK, NPLT, SHPL) Group 7 = CNBR (overlaps the High Plains study; now in a separate group to distinguish it from other FY 91 studies) Changed item CANADA to INTL. Changed item ABBV to SUID to be consistent with NAWQA data base network tables.
Version 5.1 - Replaced DELR boundary with one supplied by Paul Dunne. The boundary was extended to include the entire Christina River Basin. This change also affects the DLMV.
Version 5.2 - Replaced ALMN boundary with higher resolution boundary provided by James Sams III; also replaced MIAM boundary with enhanced boundary provided by Lori Mattern.
Version 5.3 - Small change to UMIS boundary provided by Paul Hanson.
Version 5.4 - Changes to boundaries of YELL (Ron Zelt), NROK (Deann Dutton), UIRB (Terri Arnold), DELR (Paul Dunne),
Version 5.5 - Changes to boundaries of SANA (Katherine Paybins).
Version 6.0 - CHANGED DATUM TO NAD83.
Cut out Delaware River Basin portion and reprojected to the current Albers projection.
Area of polygon in square coverage units (square meters)
Computed
n/a
GIS software
Perimeter of polygon in coverage units (meters)
Computed
n/a
GIS software
Internal feature number
Computed
n/a
GIS software
User-assigned feature number
User-defined
n/a
GIS software
Assigned NAWQA Study-Unit number
NAWQA program
Loosely based on WRD region. Values 1-57 are NAWQA study units. 0 is not a NAWQA study unit.
User assigned
Name of Study-Unit
NAWQA program
See table 1.
User assigned
Code for starting date of Study Unit
NAWQA program
1= FY91 except for CNBR; 2= FY94; 3= FY97; 4= FY99; 5= Not scheduled yet (not in High Plains area); 6= Not scheduled yet (in High Plains area); 7= CNBR (FY91 in High Plains area); 0= Not a NAWQA Study Unit.
User assigned
Flag for Pilot study
NAWQA program
1=pilot study; 0=not pilot study
User assigned
4-letter abbreviation for Study Unit
NAWQA program
See Entity_and_Attribute_Overview
User assigned
Flags polygons in Canada (REDN,PUGT,CONN) or Mexico (CAZB)
NAWQA
1=in Canada or Mexico; 0=not in Canada or Mexico
User assigned
Area of polygon in square miles
NAWQA
AREA * .0000003861
User assigned
USGS water-resources administrative region
USGS
USGS Water Resources Division administrative region: N=northeastern; S=southeastern; C=central; W=western
User assigned
Internal number of from-node
Computed
n/a
GIS software
Internal number of to-node
Computed
n/a
GIS software
Internal number of polygon to left of arc
Computed
n/a
GIS software
Internal number of polygon to right of arc
Computed
n/a
GIS software
Length of arc in coverage units
Computed
n/a
GIS software
Internal feature number
Computed
n/a
GIS software
User-assigned feature number
User-defined
n/a
GIS software
Flag for US boundary
NAWQA
1=US boundary; 0=not US boundary
User assigned
Flag for arcs in Canada or Mexico
NAWQA
1=Canada or Mexico arc; 0=U.S. arc
User assigned
Flag for group 1 boundaries
NAWQA
1=group 1 boundary; 0=not group 1 boundary
User assigned
Flag for group 2 boundaries
NAWQA
1=group 2 boundary; 0=not group 2 boundary
User assigned
Flag for group 3 boundaries
NAWQA
1=group 3 boundary; 0=not group 3 boundary
User assigned
Flag for group 4 boundaries
NAWQA
1=group 4 boundary; 0=not group 4 boundary
User assigned
Flag for group 5 boundaries
NAWQA
1=group 5 boundary; 0=not group 5 boundary
User assigned
Flag for group 6 boundaries
NAWQA
1=group 6 boundary; 0=not group 6 boundary
User assigned
Flag for group 7 boundaries
NAWQA
1=group 7 boundary; 0=not group 7 boundary
User assigned
Flag for Study-Unit boundaries
NAWQA
1=Study-Unit boundary; 0=not Study-Unit boundary
User assigned
Although these data have been used by the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, no warranty expressed or implied is made by the U.S. Forest Service as to the accuracy of the data. The act of Distribution shall not constitute any such warranty, and no responsibility is assumed by the U.S. Forest Service in the use of these data, software, or related materials.
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