Video clip: Introduction to ACT and TANC activities (not activated yet).

Topical Study Teams, made up of study unit project members, National Synthesis members, and National Research Program scientists, will define the direction and design of the studies. These study teams will not only focus on sources, transport processes, and effects, but will also address implications for water-quality management and the possibility of extrapolating to other unmonitored areas. Implementation of the plans will start in fiscal year 2003. For more detail see pages 17-21 of Water Resources Impact (July 2002).

The San Joaquin-Tulare Basins NAWQA will participate in the first two topical studies listed below.

• Agricultural Chemicals: Sources, Transport, and Fate (ACT) -- This study will help understand how environmental processes and agricultural practices affect the transport and fate of chemicals in the hydrologic systems of nationally important agricultural settings, and the effects on the quality of streams and ground water.
• Transport of Anthropogenic and Natural Contaminants to Community Water Supply Wells (TANC) -- This study will determine the primary anthropogenic and natural contaminant sources, aquifer processes, and well characteristics that control the transport and transformation of contaminants along flow paths to supply wells in representative water-supply aquifers.
• Nutrient Enrichment Effects on Streams Draining Agricultural Regions (NEET) -- This study will describe how biological communities and associated processes respond to varying levels of nutrient enrichment among agricultural streams in different environmental settings.
• Bioaccumulation of mercury in aquatic organisms -- This study will describe the environmental and biological factors that govern the transformation of mercury into methyl mercury, which can accumulate to toxic levels in aquatic food chains.
• Effects of urbanization on stream ecosystems -- This study will determine how stream ecosystems respond to land-use changes associated with urbanization, and how these responses vary across different environmental settings.