Northeast Stream Quality Assessment Gets Underway

Researchers are studying the relations between stressors and stream ecology across large regions of the United States. (Credit: USGS)

In 2013, scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey began working on the National Water-Quality Assessment when they studied the health of streams throughout the Midwest. After that, they surveyed the Southeast in 2014 and streams in the Pacific Northwest in 2015. But this year, it’s the Northeast region’s turn.

The goal of the effort, called the Northeast Stream Quality Assessment, is to characterize factors in the area’s streams that are integral to good water quality as well as some of the stressors that are being felt by aquatic life there. Big focuses for the scientists are the impacts that urbanization and agriculture have had on stream quality.

Those involved in the assessment are aiming to provide policymakers, as well as the public, with information needed to inform the best approaches for protecting stream health in the region. States to be surveyed include Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Top image: Researchers are studying the relations between stressors and stream ecology across large regions of the United States. (Credit: USGS)