Water Quality Technician Guide

The Aquatic Commons is a thematic digital repository covering the natural marine, estuarine /brackish and fresh water environments . It includes all aspects of the science, technology, management and conservation of these environments, their organisms and resources, and the economic, sociological and legal aspects. It is complementary to OceanDocs, which is supported by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC)/ International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) specifically to collect, preserve and facilitate access to all research output from members of their Ocean Data and Information Networks (ODINS).

Ammonia is one of several forms of nitrogen that exist in aquatic environments. Unlike other forms of nitrogen, which can cause nutrient over-enrichment of a water body at elevated concentrations and indirect effects on aquatic life, ammonia causes direct toxic effects on aquatic life.

Ashtracker provides public access to industry-reported data from state and company records about groundwater contamination at coal ash dumps. Coal ash, a toxic waste generated by coal-fired power plants, is one of the largest industrial waste streams in the United States. Each year, coal plants generate over 100 million tons of ash, most of which is dumped into landfills and ponds that are often unlined. Pollutants in the ash frequently leak into groundwater and nearby waterways, and some of these contaminants (such as arsenic and mercury) can cause cancer, neurological damage, and other health problems.

Bacteria are common single-celled organisms and are a natural component of lakes, rivers, and streams. Most of these bacteria are harmless to humans; however, certain bacteria, some of which normally inhabit the intestinal tract of warm-blooded animals, have the potential to cause sickness and disease in humans. High numbers of these harmless bacteria often indicate high numbers of harmful bacteria as well as other disease-causing organisms such as viruses and protozoans.

The Biotic Index was developed by William M. Beck, Jr. in response to the need for a simple biological measure of stream pollution. This method is based on the classification of selected aquatic invertebrates into categories depending on their response to organic pollution (sewage and other oxygen demanding wastes). General experience has indicated that the Biotic Index is also useful in classifying other types of pollution. Extensive study of the distribution of invertebrates in relation to water quality enabled Beck to divide these organisms into three groups on the basis of their ability to tolerate organic pollution.

"With data on more than 3,000 community, schools and day care public water systems in California, the website lets users look up their water system and see whether it complies with federal drinking water standards. The site includes an interactive map that shows the locations of 292 public water systems that are currently out of compliance with federal standards for contaminants such as nitrate and arsenic."

Searchable database.

When the water in our rivers, lakes, and oceans becomes polluted; it can endanger wildlife, make our drinking water unsafe, and threaten the waters where we swim and fish. EPA research supports efforts under the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act.

The series consists of 13 chapters which describe the ground-water resources of regional areas that collectively cover the 50 States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

evoted to developing measures to reduce vulnerability to drought. Based at the University of Nebraska.

One of the essential elements of life on this planet is freshwater. Sustainable development therefore demands sustainable management of the world's limited resources of freshwater. Water resources cannot be managed, however, unless we know where they are, in what quantity and quality, and how variable they are likely to be in the foreseeable future.

The mission of the IUCN Global Water Programme is to be a trusted partner for evidence-based and adaptive change in water resource management that benefits nature and people. We bring together our extensive network of IUCN Members, experts, government and private sector partners to develop sustainable solutions to manage water resources. Our work focuses on water governance that integrates the needs of people and nature, the implementation of sustainable water resource management to secure water-related ecosystem services and conserve freshwater biodiversity, and support increased investment in ecosystems as natural water infrastructure.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Our goal is to achieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. With over 194 member states, FAO works in over 130 countries worldwide. We believe that everyone can play a part in ending hunger. FAO's work in land and water is relevant to several dimensions of sustainable development, such as the governance and management of food production systems; the provision of essential ecosystem services; food security; human health; biodiversity conservation; and the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change.

The Middle East Water Collection provides access to over 5,000 public items on political, socio-economic, demographic, and legal issues of water in the Middle East. Materials include data, books, journal and newspaper articles, and documents published in the Middle East, Europe, and North America originating from a variety of publishers and national and multinational agencies and organizations. Materials in the public domain are available in full text from this website.

Scientists and resource managers recognize that ecosystems are dynamic. One way to track the status and changes of these dynamic systems is through the use of indicators. An indicator represents the state or trend of certain environmental conditions over a given area and a specified period of time.

The Drought Center helps people, organizations and institutions build resilience to drought though monitoring and planning, and we are the academic partner and web host of the U.S. Drought Monitor map. Our capabilities include climatology, social science and public engagement, and we work at all scales, from individual ranches to local, state and tribal government, and countries around the world.

NEMI is a searchable database that allows scientists and managers to find and compare analytical and field methods for all phases of environmental monitoring.

The National Institutes for Water Resources (NIWR) plays a major role in addressing water-related concerns by providing a platform for research, training, and collaboration at the state level. Housed in the nation’s land-grant universities and four U.S. territories, the 54 NIWR member institutes leverage university expertise in research, education, and outreach to find solutions for the water management challenges we face. With our funding and educational services, water-related professionals and researchers receive support for the creation of local tools and policies to better manage our water. These successes start at the local level and have the ability to grow and make an impact across the United States.

A Water Resources Research Institute is located in each state and territory of the U.S. The Guam Institute also serves the Federated States of Micronesia.

The NIWR and IWR will use their best efforts to establish a long-term cooperation and partnership in the development and practice of integrated water resources management through scientific research and joint activities or programs that support national, regional and local water resource needs.

This table contains the most up to date criteria for aquatic life ambient water quality criteria. Aquatic life criteria for toxic chemicals are the highest concentration of specific pollutants or parameters in water that are not expected to pose a significant risk to the majority of species in a given environment or a narrative description of the desired conditions of a water body being "free from" certain negative conditions. The table below lists EPA's recommended aquatic life criteria. State and tribal governments may use these criteria or use them as guidance in developing their own.

Water supply forecasts by state and river basin, precipitation reports, reservoir reports, information from the Western Regional Climate Data Center, reports on snowpack, etc. Welcome to the National Water and Climate Center website. The Center is the technical lead for the Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecasting Program, the NRCS national Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN), and a large number of water and climate activities. These include providing data for conservation, tools for assessing water supplies and climate, and resources for addressing questions on local and regional conditions, drought and climate trends. Our Center also serves as a resource and co-director for the USDA Pacific Northwest Climate Hub. In the western U.S., most of the annual streamflow that provides water supplies arrives as spring and summer melt from mountain snowpack. Our Program provides the only regional direct measurement of this resource through our manual snow courses and automated SNOTEL network. If you peruse the photos in our online gallery, you can see how beautiful, difficult and exciting our work can be and the fantastic, yet extreme, locations where we collect these data.

pH is a measure of how acidic/basic water is. The range goes from 0 - 14, with 7 being neutral. pHs of less than 7 indicate acidity, whereas a pH of greater than 7 indicates a base. pH is really a measure of the relative amount of free hydrogen and hydroxyl ions in the water. Water that has more free hydrogen ions is acidic, whereas water that has more free hydroxyl ions is basic. Since pH can be affected by chemicals in the water, pH is an important indicator of water that is changing chemically. pH is reported in "logarithmic units". Each number represents a 10-fold change in the acidity/basicness of the water. Water with a pH of five is ten times more acidic than water having a pH of six.

Phosphorus is a common constituent of agricultural fertilizers, manure, and organic wastes in sewage and industrial effluent. It is an essential element for plant life, but when there is too much of it in water, it can speed up eutrophication (a reduction in dissolved oxygen in water bodies caused by an increase of mineral and organic nutrients) of rivers and lakes. Soil erosion is a major contributor of phosphorus to streams. Bank erosion occurring during floods can transport a lot of phosphorous from the river banks and adjacent land into a stream, as this picture of the Rio Chama near Chamita, New Mexico shows (photograph by Lisa Carter).

Produced waters are those volumes of water that are typically recovered during oil and gas exploration, development, or production. This database has more than 100,000 new samples with spatial coverage from both conventional and unconventional oil and gas development

Monitoring of both land treatment and water quality is the best way to document the effectiveness of nonpoint source pollution control efforts. The purposes of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Section 319 National Monitoring Program (NMP) are to provide credible documentation of the feasibility of controlling nonpoint sources, and to improve the technical understanding ofnonpoint source pollution and the effectiveness of nonpoint source control technology and approaches. These objectives are to be achieved through intensive monitoring and evaluation of a subset of watershed projects funded under Section 319 (USEPA, 1991).

The Water Resources Research Institute for each state or territory is located at its "1862" land-grant university or at another college or university designated by the governor or state legislature. The Institute in Guam is a regional institute serving Guam, The Federated States of Micronesia, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The Institute in Hawaii also serves American Samoa.

The Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database, developed and maintained by the OSU College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, in collaboration with the Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering.

Turbidity is the measure of relative clarity of a liquid. It is an optical characteristic of water and is an expression of the amount of light that is scattered by material in the water when a light is shined through the water sample. The higher the intensity of scattered light, the higher the turbidity. Material that causes water to be turbid include clay, silt, finely divided inorganic and organic matter, algae, soluble colored organic compounds, and plankton and other microscopic organisms. Picture of three glass beakers with water with turbidities of 10, 200, and 1500.Turbidity makes water cloudy or opaque. The picture to the left shows a USGS hydrologist sampling highly turbid water in the Colorado River in Arizona. The water collected in the bottle will be used to find out the turbidity, which is measured by shining a light through the water and is reported in nephelometric turbidity units (NTU). During periods of low flow (base flow), many rivers are a clear green color, and turbidities are low, usually less than 10 NTU. During a rainstorm, particles from the surrounding land are washed into the river making the water a muddy brown color, indicating water that has higher turbidity values. Also, during high flows, water velocities are faster and water volumes are higher, which can more easily stir up and suspend material from the stream bed, causing higher turbidities.

The portal provides easy access to valuable long-term data sets that can be useful in assessing how landscape modifications are affecting sediment transport in streams and rivers. Sediment data and ancillary data on streamflow condition, sediment grain size, sampling method, and landscape condition are also available for download within the portal.

Water information is fundamental to national and local economic well-being, protection of life and property, and effective management of the Nation’s water resources. The USGS works with partners to monitor, assess, conduct targeted research, and deliver information on a wide range of water resources and conditions including streamflow, groundwater, water quality, and wateruse and availability.

Rapidly moving water, such as in a mountain stream or large river, tends to contain a lot of dissolved oxygen, whereas stagnant water contains less. Bacteria in water can consume oxygen as organic matter decays. Thus, excess organic material in lakes and rivers can cause eutrophic conditions, which is an oxygen-deficient situation that can cause a water body "to die." Aquatic life can have a hard time in stagnant water that has a lot of rotting, organic material in it, especially in summer (the concentration of dissolved oxygen is inversely related to water temperature), when dissolved-oxygen levels are at a seasonal low. Water near the surface of the lake– the epilimnion– is too warm for them, while water near the bottom–the hypolimnion– has too little oxygen. Conditions may become especially serious during a period of hot, calm weather, resulting in the loss of many fish. You may have heard about summertime fish kills in local lakes that likely result from this problem.

he U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has been measuring how much water is flowing in rivers, determining the water levels of groundwater, and collecting water samples to describe what the quality of those waters are for over a century. Millions of measurements and analyses have been made. Water temperature is taken almost every time water is sampled and investigated, no matter where water is being studied.

Looking at water, you might think that it's the most simple thing around. Pure water is practically colorless, odorless, and tasteless. But it's not at all simple and plain and it is vital for all life on Earth. Where there is water there is life, and where water is scarce, life has to struggle or just "throw in the towel."

Tracking Water Quality of the Nation's Rivers and Streams. The USGS National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Project is characterizing the status and trends of the Nation’s surface-water quality through a National Water Quality Network. This website provides data on national ambient water-quality conditions. The data are reported systematically and updated annually.

This Google Search takes you to over 500 research reports on water treatment, water and health, water use and conservation in the Public Report Library of the Water Research Foundation.

The Water Resources Collections and Archives (WRCA) is a unique library that collects contemporary and historic materials on all aspects of water resources. This collection was formerly named Water Resources Center Archives, located at UC Berkeley. It is now located at UC Riverside and CSU San Bernardino; its collections remain available to researchers around the world.

This branch of the National Academies produces reports such as: Water Reuse: Potential for Expanding the Nation's Water Supply through Reuse of Municipal Wastewater and Sustainable Water and Environmental Management in the California Bay-Delta. Most have free pdf or read online versions.

Freshwater is the most important resource for mankind, cross-cutting all social, economic and environmental activities. It is a condition for all life on our planet, an enabling or limiting factor for any social and technological development, a possible source of welfare or misery, cooperation or conflict. To achieve water security, we must protect vulnerable water systems, mitigate the impacts of water-related hazards such as floods and droughts, safeguard access to water functions and services and manage water resources in an integrated and equitable manner. UNESCO works to build the scientific knowledge base to help countries manage their water resources in a sustainable way through the International Hydrological Programme (IHP), through leading the UN-wide World Water Development Report and through numerous Centres and Chairs on water around the world.

When the water in our rivers, lakes, and oceans becomes polluted; it can endanger wildlife, make our drinking water unsafe, and threaten the waters where we swim and fish. EPA research supports efforts under the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act.

Documents (including legal transcripts, water project records, videos, personal papers, etc.) about the Columbia, Colorado, Platte, and Rio Grande river basins. You can perform advanced searches, or browse through the available materials. The signature collections are a real find. Visitors can look over: "Native American Water Rights in Arizona" and "Las Vegas: Water in the West", among others.

Water is essential for life. The amount of fresh water on earth is limited, and its quality is under constant pressure. Preserving the quality of fresh water is important for the drinking-water supply, food production and recreational water use. Water quality can be compromised by the presence of infectious agents, toxic chemicals, and radiological hazards.

The 2018 edition of the World Water Development Report (WWDR 2018) seeks to inform policy and decision-makers, inside and outside the water community, about the potential of nature-based solutions (NBS) to address contemporary water management challenges across all sectors, and particularly regarding water for agriculture, sustainable cities, disaster risk reduction and improving water quality.