94-7 The Need for Water Resources Data: Examples from across the Decades...Centuries Actually

Session: Geoscience and Water: How Geoscience Affects Water-Related Public Policy–Past, Present, and Future

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In 1995, the “Contract with America” proposed abolishing the U.S. Geological Survey. Talking points for GSA’s Geology and Public Policy Committee during legislative visits stressed the importance of the USGS and the programs it supported. During office visits, not a single legislative staffer knew that USGS conducted our nation’s stream-gaging program, the foundation of flood hazard prediction. In early 2017, following the inauguration of the first Trump administration, infrastructure was front and center on Capitol Hill.  The critical role of “water as infrastructure” was an important talking point to policy makers. Both majority and minority legislators agreed.

Now, 30 years later, 15 years of high-resolution groundwater, surface water, and aquifer property data from Manistee National Forest in Michigan are slated to be canceled by year’s end. Initiated as a response to threats of bottled water extraction (“Michigan Water Wars”), this effort evolved to include hydrogeological monitoring of ecosystem restoration efforts. And now, climate change impacts form an overwhelming confounding variable for critical zone monitoring. Groundwater levels are changing in response to canopy reduction during savanna ecosystem restoration and from altered rainfall and snowmelt due to climate change. Perhaps more importantly, groundwater temperatures have increased in this baseflow dominated watershed. These high-resolution data are being used to calibrate a coupled surface and groundwater model to simulate heat transport from rainfall through groundwater discharge.  The implications for aquatic resource management of cold-water fisheries are significant. In Michigan, the economic impact of recreational fishing is $2 billion/year.

Water is “connective tissue” between abiotic and biotic elements of our planet.  If this is a reasonable perspective, then beyond “simply” understanding quality and quantity of water supply, consideration of nearly all natural hazards, biodiversity, ecosystem services, food supply, soil erosion, fossil fuels, renewable energy, climate change, mineral resources, built infrastructure, and more, demand water resources data. To have data-driven science policy for our nation, we must actively advocate for comprehensive water resource data and communicate that need directly to elected decision makers.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-11153

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