Primary Functions
- The National Water Quality Data Portal (WQP) is a cooperative service sponsored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Water Quality Monitoring Council (NWQMC) that integrates publicly available water quality data.
Detailed Description
The National Water Quality Data Portal (WQP) is a cooperative service sponsored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Water Quality Monitoring Council (NWQMC) that integrates publicly available water quality data from the USGS National Water Information System (NWIS) the EPA STOrage and RETrieval (STORET) Data Warehouse, and the USDA ARS Sustaining The Earth’s Watersheds-Agricultural Research Database System (STEWARDS) .
The EPA water quality data originate from the STORET Data Warehouse, which is the EPA’s repository of water quality monitoring data collected by water resource management groups across the country. Organizations, including states, tribes, watershed groups, other federal agencies, volunteer groups and universities, submit data to the STORET Warehouse in order to make their data publicly accessible.
The National Water Quality Data Portal (WQP) provides an easy way to access data stored in various large water quality databases. The WQP provides various input parameters on the form including location, site, sampling, and date parameters to filter and customize the returned results. Equivalent data retrievals can be performed using web services, which have the same input parameters and predefined output formats offered through the form.
