Surface- and ground-water quality data were collected in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River basin from August 1992 to September 1995 as part of the USGS National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) program. The ACF River basin drains about 19,800 square miles in western Georgia, eastern Alabama, and the Florida panhandle into the Apalachicola Bay, which discharges into the Gulf of Mexico. Data collected as part of this study focused on five major land uses: poultry production in the headwaters of the Chattahoochee River, urban and suburban areas of Metropolitan Atlanta and Columbus, silviculture in the piedmont and fall line hills, and row crop agriculture in the upper coastal plain (clastic hydrogeologic setting) and the lower coastal plain (karst hydrogeologic setting).

Physical, chemical, and biological data were collected at 132 stream sites and at 15 locations within 6 reservoirs. The monitoring network is a nested design with a core of fixed monitoring sites (integrator and indicator sites), a group of land-use comparison sites, and a group of mixed land use sites including large tributaries and main stem rivers that provide spatial distribution. Water samples were collected at frequencies varying from hourly to annually, depending on the intended purpose, and were analyzed for nutrients, carbon, pesticides, major ions, and field parameters. Data collected from the reservoirs included surficial bed sediments and segmented cores.

Ground-water quality data were collected at 161 sites within the ACF River basin. These sites included a combination of monitoring and domestic wells, springs and seeps, and subsurface drains. The data are concentrated in the Metropolitan Atlanta (urban land use) area and in the coastal plain (agricultural land use).

These data and associated locator maps are accessible on the World Wide Web at the ACF NAWQA home page. Data are presented in manageable tables that are grouped based on land use, site type, and project component. The user can view maps and data tables on the computer screen, or downloaded data tables as tab delimited (RDB) files.