Montana's Statewide Monitoring Network: a Potential NGWMN Contributer

Montana’s statewide groundwater monitoring program provides long-term time-series data useful to address groundwater resource issues. The network is part of the Ground Water Assessment Program at the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology (MBMG). Water-level and water-quality data from the network  are stored in Montana’s Ground Water Information Center (GWIC) database and are available through the GWIC website at http://mbmggwic.mtech.edu. The network design is based primarily on aquifer extents, conceptual groundwater flow models, and density of groundwater development. Water-resource managers, consultants, government scientists and others use statewide network data to help address issues including; how might the sealing of irrigation distribution canals or adoption of more efficient irrigation practices change the amount of groundwater in storage and the timing of discharge to streams? How do aquifers react to interannual or longer precipitation variability? Non-federal monitoring programs provide data that not only address state issues but are useful to address national questions. A challenge for the nation is to successfully integrate information generated by non-federal monitoring networks into a National Ground Water Monitoring Network (NGWMN). Successful integration will require reconciling differing field practices, data management systems, and location and well construction data sets.  Overall alignment of mission between non-federal networks and a NGWMN is also important to insure that long-term data will be collected. Integrated state and NGWMN sites will produce data important at the state and national level. Therefore, the federal and non-federal partners must ultimately share the costs of measuring, processing, and making the data available nationally. The ACWI/SOGW framework document, A National Framework for Ground-Water Monitoring in the United States addresses the many issues surrounding integration of non-federal and federal networks and includes a portfolio of funding/data gathering models that tailor potential funding options to the interests, capabilities, and long-term monitoring missions of potential NGWMN cooperators.