This is the repository for the National Aquatic Resource Survey Study. Data can be found here: https://www.epa.gov/national-aquatic-resource-surveys/data-national-aquatic-resource-surveys
This project is a collaborative project by Wes Mitchell, Catherine Ruhm, Meaghan Shaw, Jordyn Stoll, and Christie Bahlai.
The National Aquatic Resource Survey (NARS) assesses water bodies throughout the US for physical, chemical, and biological variables. This program was started to assess the condition of our water resources with respect to the Clean Water Act. More information about the goals of the program can be found here: https://www.epa.gov/national-aquatic-resource-surveys/background-national-aquatic-resource-surveys. The data collected includes essentially everything about the roughly 15,000 sample sites in the US—from land cover to water chemistry to biological assays. We plan to use this national data set to understand how a land cover attribute impacts water quality, which then impacts the biotic components. These data do not have a known DOI but are freely available at: https://www.epa.gov/national-aquatic-resource-surveys/data-national-aquatic-resource-surveys. Other scientists have used these data for publications, which can be found here: https://www.epa.gov/national-aquatic-resource-surveys/journal-articles-applying-national-aquatic-resource-survey-data#Rivers%20and%20Streams. We will be using the 'Stream 2004-2005 WSA All Data' file. Our data name is: National Stream Data 2004-2005
Research Subjects: Hydrology, Water Chemistry, Environmental Toxicology, Stream Biology, Land Use, and Diversity Responses
The US EPA "EPA is working with state, tribal, and other federal agencies to implement the National Aquatic Resource Surveys (NARS). States and tribes participate in these surveys through their Clean Water Act Section 106 Monitoring Initiative grants. These groups are key partners in planning, conducting field/lab work, and analyzing/reviewing data. Additionally, many of these organizations opt to add additional sites or indicators during the field year for state/tribal specific purposes. EPA cooperates with a variety of other federal agencies on survey design, indicators, lab methods, field sampling, assessment and reporting, as well as on enhancing the surveys through intensifications in selected areas or related to key issues." (https://www.epa.gov/national-aquatic-resource-surveys/partners-national-aquatic-resource-surveys)
Place of data publication: https://www.epa.gov/national-aquatic-resource-surveys/data-national-aquatic-resource-surveys
Data collection process: Varies by data set.
Data processing: Open Refine, MS Excel processing,
Data file type: comma separated values (csv) universally readable.
File Index: https://www.epa.gov/national-aquatic-resource-surveys/data-national-aquatic-resource-surveys
Standard Metadata: Each data file type (riparian, water chemistry, etc.) has a respective metadata file to explain column headers. Not all variables are described in these files.
More information:
A data dictionary (sometimes used interchangeably with "codebook") is another text file for defining field names and values. The file includes a list of all field names in the data set and a description of each such as: units of measurement, formulas used for calculation, abbreviations, value ranges, as well as the relationship of fields to one another.
Waterworld by Mitchell, Ruhm, Bahlai, Shaw, and Stoll is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
