Full Description

Critical differences in project design, methods, data analysis, and datamanagement have often made it difficult for water resources monitoring information from various projects to be shared by other potential data users. In order to address this difficulty, the National Water Quality Monitoring Council and the Methods and Data Comparability Board were chartered under the Federal Advisory Committee in 1997. The mission of the Board is to promoteand coordinate the collection of comparable water quality data. Several project activities, under Methods Board oversight, are described in this paper including: use of the Data Quality Objectives process in monitoring design and method selection; field method performance quality and pilot studies to determine field method comparability; the description and design of pilots demonstrating the implementation of performance-based systems in water monitoring; evaluation of the need for national laboratory accreditation programs, particularly for federal laboratories; development of a public web-based National Environmental Methods Index for describing and comparing laboratory and field methods; development of a core set of Water Quality Data Elements for all water monitoring related laboratory measurements; and, public outreach activities designed to communicate and disseminate information on methods issues to the monitoring community. Includes 9 references, table, figure.

Product Details

Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 01/01/2000 Number of Pages: 12File Size: 1 file , 290 KB