Jointly managed by multiple states and the federal government, there are many ongoing efforts to characterize and understand water quality in the Delaware River Basin (DRB). Many State, Federal and non-profit organizations have collected surface-water-quality samples across the DRB for decades and many of these data are available through the National Water Quality Monitoring Council's Water Quality Portal (WQP). For this data release, WQP data in the DRB were harmonized, meaning that they were processed to create a clean and readily usable data set. The harmonization process included the synthesis of parameter names and fractions, the condensation of remarks and other data qualifiers, the resolution of duplicate records, an initial quality control check of the data, and other steps described in this data release. The water-quality data set provided is the harmonized discrete multi-source surface-water-quality data pulled from the WQP and includes data for nutrients, sediment, salinity, major ions, bacteria, temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, and turbidity in the DRB, for all available years. The code and supplemental information used to create the water-quality data set is included in this data release. Also provided is the USGS streamgage match table, which pairs the monitoring sites in the water-quality data set to USGS streamgages and lists basic streamgage information, including distance from the water-quality site and if the streamgage was recently active. Lastly, this data release includes a 12-page summary document, which includes a detailed description of the harmonization process, basic summaries of the water-quality data set, and the results of a screening process in which water-quality sites were assessed for recent and long-term sampling and paired with nearby and recently active USGS streamgages. Please see the read me file for more information, including the organization of this data release and its contents.
Citation Information
| Publication Year | 2019 |
|---|---|
| Title | Multi-source surface-water-quality data and U.S. Geological Survey streamgage match for the Delaware River Basin |
| DOI | 10.5066/P9PX8LZO |
| Authors | Megan E Shoda, Jennifer C Murphy, James Falcone |
| Product Type | Data Release |
| Record Source | USGS Digital Object Identifier Catalog |
| USGS Organization | Earth System Processes Division |
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