NEW ENGLAND COASTAL BASINS NAWQA PROGRAM: GROUND-WATER STUDIES

LAND-USE STUDY

Aerial view of Boston metropolitan area eastward from Newton, MA	Installation of a land-use study well in a residential area	Close-up view of drilling a monitoring well	Developing a land-use study well

Primary objectives of the Land-Use Studies:

• assess the concentrations and distribution of water-quality constituents in recently recharged ground water (generally less than 10-years old) associated with land-use and hydrogeologic conditions in a Study Unit
• understand the human and natural factors in each setting that affect ground-water quality
  (Gilliom and others, 1995)

The NECB land-use study focused on shallow, unconfined surficial aquifers that are overlain by new residential and light commercial land uses (developed between 10 and 30 years ago) in the Boston Metropolitan Area. Twenty-nine monitoring wells were installed by the USGS and sampled during the summer of 1999.

For each well, field parameters were measured and water samples were collected for laboratory analysis of nutrients, major ions, trace elements, pesticides, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and isotopes. The results of this ground-water sampling were published in a USGS Water-Resources Investigations Report in 2001 (WRIR 01-4042).

Study Location Map

Water-Quality Data

Important readme file Field data: tab-delimited RDB file MS Excel file Nutrients: tab-delimited RDB file MS Excel file Major Ions: tab-delimited RDB file MS Excel file Trace elements: tab-delimited RDB file MS Excel file VOCs: tab-delimited RDB file MS Excel file Radiochemical/other: tab-delimited RDB file MS Excel file Pesticides: tab-delimited RDB file MS Excel file Well inventory: tab-delimited RDB file MS Excel file