NWDTW 2024

Calibrations, Field Procedures and Demos, Oh My! Are you interested in best practices for Continuous Water Quality? This course will go over fundamentals of continuous water-quality calibrations and field procedures and include on-site demos and exercises. Students should bring a laptop.

The USGS maintains a large network of real-time continuous water-quality instruments to assess conditions in surface and groundwater. Throughout the country, there are over 2,500 sites where the big 5 parameters (temperature, specific conductance, pH, dissolved oxygen, and turbidity) are monitored. These continuous water-quality data are available to the public (WaterQualityWatch, National Water Information System, and USGS National Water Dashboard). USGS data are known for the high quality and accuracy, which means that staff must apply data corrections consistently. Staff often need instruction on records corrections, computation, and processing using AQUARIUS Time Series (TS). This refresher presents concepts and procedures for record computation outlined in Techniques and Methods Report Book 1, Section D3 titled "Guidelines and Standard Procedures of Continuous Water-Quality Monitors Station Operation, Record Computation and Data Reporting." Staff that are involved in the collection and processing of continuous water-quality monitoring data and interested in better understanding continuous water-quality monitoring records computation are encouraged to attend. This is not intended to replace QW2298, but to offer staff an opportunity to get hands-on training and assistance in water-quality records. Staff should bring questions!