The Challenge

In cooperation with the City of Houston, USGS collects, processes, and interprets water-quality, streamflow, and reservoir water elevation and capacity data. These data are collected to better understand the effects of urbanization in Lake Houston, a drinking water reservoir in Houston, Texas. The combined monitoring efforts of Lake Houston and the associated watershed increase the understanding of the effects of natural and controlled inflows, nutrient and sediment loads, and water-column structure on the chemistry and biology of Lake Houston. Two USGS monitoring stations in the Lake Houston watershed evaluate the effects of watershed influences and in-lake processes on Lake Houston water quality. A web-based data viewer is needed to monitor the water quality in Lake Houston.

Our Solution

IHDS developers designed a single page web application and a data viewer including

• Visualizing how Lake Houston and surrounding areas have changed since 1984
• Graphing real-time turbidity
• Visualizing data from 7 USGS water-quality observation stations in real-time
• Showing the locations of USGS observation stations through a map interface