(01.14.05)

Design of a National Water Quality Monitoring Network

Charges to Monitoring Design and Inventory Workgroups

The National Water Quality Monitoring Council (NWQMC) has accepted the task of providing advice on the design of a national water quality monitoring network that will meet specific objectives and have the characteristics envisioned in Chapter 15 of the Final Report of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy (COP). The NWQMC will conduct this effort through a Steering Committee composed primarily of Council members, along with several workgroups, the members of which will provide detailed analysis and recommendations that are key to the entire effort. This document presents the charges, including expected products and timelines, for two of these workgroups:

• Design Workgroup
• Inventory Workgroup

Background:
The Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI) through the NWQMC has agreed to provide advice, counsel, and recommendations that address the COP recommendation regarding creation of a national water quality monitoring network. The proposal from the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). See also http://www.oceancommission.gov for the full COP report and additional background information.

General Approach to the Task of Developing a National Monitoring Network:
Nine members of the NWQMC have agreed to serve as a Steering Committee for this task of designing a monitoring network. The Steering Committee will provide general oversight and guidance to several workgroups who will conduct the in-depth deliberations and data gathering associated with the overall task. At present three workgroups are envisioned: (1) Monitoring Design, (2) Inventory of Existing Monitoring Efforts, and (3) Methods and Data Comparability. If additional workgroups become necessary, the Steering Committee will draft charges and recruit volunteers for those workgroups.

The first two workgroups to be created are the Design and Inventory groups.

The Design Workgroup will be tasked with developing a set of recommendations about:

• where monitoring should take place,
• what constituents should be measured,
• the frequency of measurement and sample collection, and
• metadata and ancillary data (flow, land use in the watershed, tidal conditions, etc.) that should be associated with the water quality measurements.

Concurrently, the Inventory Workgroup will conduct an inventory of existing monitoring networks. Networks maintained by Federal agencies will be surveyed and described to provide an analysis of their extent and characteristics. The inventory of State and other monitoring networks will focus on areas with existing state or regional water monitoring councils, as well as the case study areas listed in the request from CEQ, which include the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico, Pacific Northwest, Gulf of Maine, and Chesapeake Bay.

The Methods and Data Comparability Workgroup will be formed somewhat later in time and will be charged with determining the extent to which existing networks use comparable measurement and analysis methods, have sufficient metadata for data sharing, and all other aspects of the large issue of data comparability.

Although the Steering Committee will want to be advised regarding workgroup progress and the need for clarification or any difficulties, the workgroups will be free to determine how they will conduct their work and to create subgroups if that would be useful. Because there is some overlap among the tasks of the workgroups, there will need to be some level of on-going communication., which will be facilitated by the Steering Committee.

When the Design and Inventory workgroups have developed a preliminary analysis, selected members of the two workgroups will compare the results of the inventories with the proposed “ideal” network to determine gaps and identify the cause of the gaps. At this point, the Methods and Data Comparability workgroup will have prepared a report that provides some general guidance on metadata and other data comparability issues that will be used to determine whether the data gaps are due to lack of data or the fact that existing data cannot be shared across boundaries.

Network Objectives:
The Steering Committee has developed the following objectives for the National Monitoring Network:

1. Define status and trends of key water quality parameters and conditions on a nationwide basis.
2. Provide data relevant to determining whether goals, standards, and resource management objectives are being met, thus contributing to sustainable and beneficial use of coastal and inland water resources.
3. Provide data to identify and rank existing and emerging problems to help target more intensive monitoring, preventive actions, or remediation.
4. Provide data to support and define coastal oceanographic and hydrologic research, including influences of freshwater inflows.
5. Provide quality-assured data for use in the preparation of interpretive reports and educational materials.

Network Characteristics:
Chapter 15 of the Ocean Commission report provides guidance on some of the characteristics of the monitoring network.

• Problems that a national monitoring network should address include, "beach closures, oxygen depletion, nutrient enrichment, toxic contamination, sedimentation, harmful algal blooms, habitat degradation, invasions by exotic species". (page 185)

• "A national monitoring network will be needed to provide information not only on water quality, but also on other measures of aquatic ecosystem health, such as sediment loadings, biological conditions, and water flow." (page 185)

• "The national monitoring network should be closely linked with IOOS." (page 190)

• "The overall system design should determine what and where to monitor, including the definition of a set of core variables. Technical expertise is needed to standardize procedures and establish quality control, data management, and reporting protocols. It is important for the national monitoring network to be periodically assessed and modified as necessary." (page 191)

• "The network's designers need to determine what, where, and how often to sample...." (page 191)

• "Designers must agree on a set of core variables to be measured at every station, with flexibility for stakeholders to measure additional variables to meet regional and local needs." (page 192)

• "The network should include both effects-based monitoring, which measures the current condition of the environment, and stressor-oriented monitoring, which measures parameters that are known or suspected to be associated with a decline in environmental health. In addition, it is desirable for the network to combine probabalistic sampling ........with fixed-station sampling...." (page 192)

Scale:
The Steering Committee for this project is still discussing the appropriate scale for the monitoring network and will provide additional input to the workgroups soon. At present, it is recommended that the Design Workgroup review the four levels of monitoring proposed in the report, “A science strategy to support management decisions related to hypoxia in the northern Gulf of Mexico and excess nutrients in the Mississippi River basin”, USGS Circular 1270, (http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/circ/2004/1270/). This approach of working at several scales seems appropriate and useful for consideration in a national monitoring design. While it is recognized that it will not be possible to monitor the smallest watersheds, monitoring representative watersheds at the sub-basin scale (133 in the Mississippi drainage) will likely lead to information that will be useful to guide more detailed monitoring of small watersheds where the effects of management decisions can be tested.

Products expected from the Design Workgroup:
The Design Workgroup is asked to prepare a report that contains the following:

1. An initial list of specific places to be monitored (dots on the map);
2. A list of constituents to be measured at all locations;
3. A second list of constituents that are to be monitored at selected sites;
4. The recommended frequency of sample collection;
5. A list of ancillary data that must be associated with a monitoring network; and
6. An explanation and justification for the choices about:
   1. where to monitor,
   2. what to monitor, and
   3. frequency of sample collection.

Products expected from the Inventory Workgroup:
The Inventory Workgroup is asked to review existing monitoring networks maintained by Federal agencies, with emphasis on national or large regional networks maintained by EPA, NOAA, USGS, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Networks maintained by Tribal, State, local and other interests are also to be surveyed with special emphasis on those locations mentioned as potential case studies in the CEQ charge: Mississippi River basin and Gulf or Mexico, Pacific Northwest, Gulf of Maine, and Chesapeake Bay. If members of the workgroup know of other locations where there is an intensive monitoring effort underway, these locations can be added to the list of potential case studies. It is anticipated that this list of case studies will not exceed 5-7 places

Characteristics of networks that should be included in the inventory include those that: (1) are monitored routinely, (2) include parameters of interest, with an identifiable level of quality assurance, (3) include latitude and longitude for ease of incorporation into GIS databases, (4) have a written protocol for sample collection and analyses, (5) locate the nearest streamgage (for riverine sites). All data should be available in electronic databases. It is expected that the workgroup will identify other characteristics of networks and data that are to be included in the inventory.

The Inventory Workgroup will prepare a report that contains the following:

1. The criteria used for including networks in the inventory.
2. For each network included in the inventory, a concise statement of the monitoring objectives of that network.
3. A GIS coverage and list of specific places that are monitored by Federal tribal, and state agencies and other interests.
4. A GIS coverage and list of specific locations that will be monitored as part of IOOS, to the extent that this information is available.
5. Link the locations identified in tasks 2 and 3 above with the constituents measured at these locations and the frequency of measurement.
6. Information about any ancillary data that is systematically collected as part of the monitoring networks, and
7. Any background information (or references to such information) that explains the logic for the choices about where to monitor, what to monitor, and frequency of sample collection.

Timelines:
The final report on the national monitoring network is due to CEQ and NSTC in January 2006. At least two progress reports from the workgroups are needed to assure that this deadline can be met and to prepare for review by the full NWQMC. In addition to the interim reports, the Steering Committee will want to track progress closely without causing the workgroups to spend too much time preparing reports rather than doing the work. The way to facilitate the needed information exchange will be to copy members of the Steering Committee on minutes of workgroup meetings and other correspondence. The first formal interim report will be due March 30, 2005, in preparation for the spring meeting of the full NWQMC. A second interim report will be needed by July 10 to prepare for the summer meeting of the NWQMC. Almost final drafts of the reports of the workgroups will be needed by August 1 so that there will be time to prepare a first draft of the entire monitoring report prior to the ACWI meeting in early September.

Resources:
Federal agencies, including USGS, EPA, NOAA, and USACE will supply appropriate individuals to participate in the workgroups at a technical level and/or to provide administrative support. This request is particularly important for non-Federal member organizations of ACWI and NWQMC, because it is critical to have additional state and local government, as well as non-governmental participation in this project. This is clearly expressed in Chapter 15 of the COP, and it is the reason that CEQ and NSTC came to ACWI/NWQMC to coordinate and implement the COP recommendations. It is expected that the workgroups will conduct their business primarily via telephone and Email. Should face-to-face meetings be necessary, as is customary with ACWI and NWQMC, the Federal agencies will provide limited travel support when it is necessary to bring non-Federal members to meeting locations to accomplish this work.

U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
This page is maintained by NWQMC Webmaster
Privacy statement || Disclaimer
http://acwi.gov/monitoring/network/workgroup_charge.html
Thursday, 21-Jun-2007 13:02:50 EDT