What Is the Relative Status of Water Quality by Land Use in the South Platte River Basin?
Previous sections of this report have examined the effects of different land uses on water quality using a combination of physical, chemical, and biological information from streams and aquifers. In this section, the status of water quality for each of four land uses will be compared and contrasted, and the role of land use as the primary factor in determining water quality will be discussed. A determination of the relative status of water quality will be accomplished by aggregating NAWQA data by land use and then summarizing the results in a single graphical display. Median values are used to characterize each land use, which places a greater emphasis on average characteristics for a land use rather than on extreme values that might occur at individual sites. The graphical display consists of nine measures of water quality for surface water and six measures of water quality for ground water. The surface-water measures include information on water, but also include information about st
