Standards-based Integration and Delivery of USGS and EPA STORET Biomonitoring Data via the Water Quality Data Portal Active

The purpose of this project was to test and develop first-generation biological data integration and retrieval capabilities for the Water Quality Portal (National Water Quality Monitoring Council, [n.d.]) using the Water Quality Exchange (WQX) data exchange standard (Environmental Information eXchange Network, 2016). The Water Quality Portal (Portal) is a significant national water data distribution node that is aligned with the vision of the Open Water Data Initiative (Advisory Committee on Water Information, [n.d.]). The Portal is sponsored by the USGS, the EPA, and the National Water Quality Monitoring Council. The WQX data exchange standard is a mature standard widely adopted within the water quality monitoring community and is used to support data flows into EPA’s STORET data warehouse. The WQX standard also provides the data integration framework for physical-chemical water quality data currently served by the Water Quality Portal. The standard supports taxon abundance data including population census, frequency class, group summaries, individual results, biological index scores, and biological scoring metrics, but prior to the inception of this project, the Portal did not deliver those types of data.



 The specific objective of this project was to integrate and deliver fish community data from two large Federal data sources: (1) the USGS BioData system and (2) USEPA STORET. The processes, tooling, and experience gained can then be applied to incorporate additional biological data from these and other sources.

Accomplishments

This project team successfully developed the ability for the public to retrieve BioData and STORET fish community data from the Water Quality Portal Web site (fig. 18). This was accomplished in July 2015 and provides access to over 680,000 BioData and STORET fish abundance records for over 13,000 sites.  As of February 2016, over 11,000 download requests have included BioData fish community data.





Note:  This description is from the Community for Data Integration 2015 Annual Report.