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Tools to synthesize water quality data
Citation:
Bousquin, J. AND C. Mullin. Tools to synthesize water quality data. Gulf of Mexico Conference (GOMCON) 2024, Tampa, FL, February 19 - 22, 2024.
Impact/Purpose:
Partners in the Gulf of Mexico may benefit from using these code packages to make their water quality data synthesis steps less labor-intensive, more standardized, and more reproducible.
Description:
The US EPA, other federal agencies, state environmental agencies, universities, private citizens, and other organizations have all contributed data from the Gulf of Mexico to the US EPA’s Water Quality Portal (WQP). Many of these contributors collected their data for analyses that are part of their respective missions, and WQP has the potential to promote data sharing to make these efforts more effective and efficient. However, the variety of data originators and metadata provided often necessitates data cleaning and harmonizing to meet required quality standards and to prepare it for analysis. To address this limitation, the US EPA has been developing python and R code packages for use in tools to make this data synthesis step less labor-intensive, more standardized, and more reproducible. We’ll introduce the code packages (harmonize-wq and TADA) and discuss how to get started using them.