Implementation of a National Ground Water Monitoring Network

The Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI) Subcommittee on Ground Water (SOGW) was formed in 2007 to develop and encourage implementation of a nationwide, long-term groundwater quantity and quality monitoring framework to provide information necessary for the planning, management, and development of groundwater supplies to meet current and future U.S. water needs and ecosystem requirements.

 The SOGW designed a collaborative National Ground Water Monitoring Network (NGWMN) through Federal, Tribal, State, nongovernmental organization, private industry, and academia volunteers. The NGWMN is populated by partner data providers who meet NGWMN requirements and evaluate their wells and associated data within those requirements.  The NGWMN has progressed through design and pilot phases, and the network implementation phase is in progress.  The NGWMN design scope, completed in 2009, includes water levels and quality from U.S. principal and major aquifers.  This design is described in the NGWMN “Framework Document”.

The pilot phase tested the NGWMN design during 2010.  Five pilots in six states evaluated wells within principal and major aquifers, well measurement and/or sampling frequency, field practices, database elements, and data management procedures. A pilot Internet data portal created a single location for compiling and distributing groundwater levels, quality, and associated metadata to the public from distributed databases located within participating agencies through a map interface.  The pilot phase demonstrated that a collaborative NGWMN is feasible.   

Implementation is in progress.  Initially, implementation includes improvements to the NGWMN portal, updates to the “Framework Document”, and addition of data from volunteer data providers.  Full implementation will require new federal funds and provide many benefits, including a single, consistent dataset from which to evaluate the status of the Nation’s aquifers and shared interstate groundwater resources, an opportunity to share data among state agencies, and an impetus for a critical review of field and data-management procedures by data providers.