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The Freshwater Explorer: An interactive map of water quality
Citation:
Cormier, S. AND C. Wharton. The Freshwater Explorer: An interactive map of water quality. ROCS-Net, NA, OH, May 18, 2022.
Impact/Purpose:
(1) Salinity is increasing in fresh water in the U.S. and around the globe. Fresh water is a valuable asset for drinking water, agriculture, industry, and aquatic life. When mineral or nutrient levels get too high, fish and other aquatic life no longer inhabit streams, water can become unsuitable for drinking for people and livestock and industrial processes. More than 500 entities contribute to Water Quality Exchange (WQX), but the data is not easily accessible and not well curated (e.g., transcription errors such as unit errors). (2) The Freshwater Explorer provides curated data within an accessible and intuitive interface to visualize and explore water quality in a map format that exhibits a network of streams in the U.S. color-coded for measured freshness (i.e., low salt and mineral content). It empowers people with data that they can use to assess areas of interest, share stories about water quality condition, causes of good and impaired water, risks, management, and outcomes. The map formal also makes it easier is easier to spot potentially anomalous data or problem situations. (3) The Freshwater Explorer provides a tool for states, tribes, industry and citizens to work together to find the right balance of protection and use of fresh water. An ancillary outcome has been an 11% reduction in data transcription errors, 1 million fewer between 2020 and 2021 in the EPA WQX data base. (4) This tool is useful for states, tribes, industry and citizens to work together to find the right balance of protection and use of fresh water.
Description:
EPA's Freshwater Explorer is an interactive mapping tool for visualizing water quality. States, tribes and other groups contribute water quality information to a database through the Water Quality Exchange (WQX). To make it easier to visualize these data, EPA scientists developed this interactive web-based mapping tool. In its first public release, Freshwater Explorer provides information about background and observed conductivity, a measure of salt content, for freshwater streams, lakes, and wells in all 50 US states, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Salts can harm aquatic life and can be indicative of the presence of other pollutants.Freshwater Explorer is useful to assess water quality and share watershed and regional stories. It enables WQX contributors to spot data integrity issues and improve data quality hosted on the WQX. This on-line demonstration shows the functionality of the Freshwater Explorer. For example, users can modify what is shown on a customizable map and pull in data from other EPA sources.