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Water Quality Data Synthesis of New England Coastal Waters for Social Science Endpoints
Citation:
Merrill, N., J. Sawyer, L. Erban, K. Mulvaney, M. Mazzotta, AND D. Keith. Water Quality Data Synthesis of New England Coastal Waters for Social Science Endpoints. 12th National Monitoring Conference, NA, Virtual, April 19 - 23, 2021.
Impact/Purpose:
To get a region-wide view of the state of coastal water quality in New England, we used the Water Quality Portal combined with data from multiple local, state and federal programs. Our attempt to synthesize the data for social science needs highlighted the usefulness as well as the challenges in using available data and the Water Quality Portal for this purpose. This presentation will cover the types of water quality metrics we found to be useful for social science, as well as the results of our data aggregation and synthesis. Our efforts highlight the ongoing need for a centralized and harmonized repository of water quality data, like the Water Quality Portal, for furthering our understanding of water quality’s effects on society.
Description:
Coastal water quality is important to people, affecting the experience and availability of water recreation, the quality of the environment around people’s homes, and the health of ecosystems people care about. Social science studies have shown that people value water quality, yet quantifying these values in a policy-relevant way remains challenging. In New England, water quality monitoring and reporting efforts tend to be local, with methods and metrics specific to confined geographic areas. Often, social science methods require variation in an attribute of water quality over larger spaces or time to discover the human connections of interest. Having easily-available, people-relevant, consistently-taken and well-documented measures of water quality is a limiting factor in social science studies on the subject. To get a region-wide view of the state of coastal water quality in New England, we used the Water Quality Portal combined with data from multiple local, state and federal programs. Our attempt to synthesize the data for social science needs highlighted the usefulness as well as the challenges in using available data and the Water Quality Portal for this purpose. This presentation will cover the types of water quality metrics we found to be useful for social science, as well as the results of our data aggregation and synthesis. Our efforts highlight the ongoing need for a centralized and harmonized repository of water quality data, like the Water Quality Portal, for furthering our understanding of water quality’s effects on society.
