DATA FROM SELECTED US-GEOLOGICAL-SURVEY NATIONAL STREAM WATER-QUALITYMONITORING NETWORKS

A nationally consistent and well-documented collection of water qualit y and quantity data compiled during the past 30 years for streams and rivers in the United States is now available on CD-ROM and accessible over the World Wide Web. The data include measurements from two U.S. G eological Survey (USGS) national networks for 122 physical, chemical, and biological properties of water collected at 680 monitoring station s from 1962 to 1995, quality assurance information that describes the sample collection agencies, laboratories, analytical methods, and esti mates of laboratory measurement error (bias and variance), and informa tion on selected cultural and natural characteristics of the station w atersheds. The data are easily accessed via user-supplied software inc luding Web browser, spreadsheet, and word processor, or may be queried and printed according to user-specified criteria using the supplied r etrieval software on CD-ROM. The water quality data serve a variety of scientific uses including research and educational applications relat ed to trend detection, flux estimation, investigations of the effects of the natural environment and cultural sources on water quality, and the development of statistical methods for designing efficient monitor ing networks and interpreting water resources data.