104B Base Grants – Communicating the State of Indiana Water Resources

Water resources are sources of water that are of sufficient quality to meet human needs, when and where they are needed. Therefore, they reflect both water supply – the useable sources of surface and groundwater, as well as demand, where and when is water being extracted for what purpose. Sustainable use of water resources therefore requires the balanced allocation of renewable natural resources to people, farms and ecosystems. Although many Federal (e.g. USGS, NOAA, USCOE) and state agencies (IDNR, IDEM) have their own publicly-available databases of water quantity, individual users need to know where to look to piece together an overall summary of water availability for the entire state of Indiana. The proposed work will address this gap by developing a website to summarize the condition of Indiana Water Resources over the previous water year in terms of reservoir storage, groundwater storage, observed streamflow, water quality and water withdrawals, based on synthesis of publicly-available data from the USGS, IDNR, and IDEM. These data sources will be supplemented with model simulations and hydrologic forecasts to provide a look forward at forecasted water levels and demand from agricultural and no-agricultural sectors over the coming year in order to inform the public on the current state of Indiana’s water resources.