Preview - Water Quality And Nitrate Pollution (Part 1: Introduction And Data Retrieval)

Retrieve Nitrate Pollution Data

Step 1: Visit "USGS Water-Quality Data for the Nation" (http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/qw) and click "Daily Data"

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Step 2: Select data parameters

  • Under “State/Territory” select “Iowa”

  • Under Water Quality Parameters select "Nitrate plus nitrite, water, in situ, mg/L as N”

    • SEARCH TIP: “Ctrl+F” (FIND) “nitrate"

    • Note: For drinking water quality purposes nitrate plus nitrite concentrations are considered to be representative of nitrate concentrations

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  • Select date range "2015-07-01 through 2016-07-01".

  • Select output options

    • Option 1: Table of data 

      • After you click SUBMIT, a will open table in browser window.  Data will need to be copied and pasted into Excel/Google Sheets for analysis.

    • Option 2: Tab-separated data 
      • After you click SUBMIT, this downloads a data file which will need to be opened in Google Sheets/Excel
      • Make sure it’s saved as a “.tsv” file in the computer’s “Downloads” folder. Just type “.tsv” after typing your data file’s name.

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STEP 3: Open and save data in Google Sheets/Excel

  • Create a new Google Sheets file

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  • Paste copied data (from HTML table) or, if you downloaded your data as a .tsv file, open the .tsv data file in Google Sheets.

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  • Save your document and title it "Nitrate Pollution Data"

Questions

Please answer the questions below.

Upload the data that you retrieved or copy a link to your Google sheet in the next question.

Upload files that are less than 5MB in size.
File Delete

If you did not upload your data file, copy a link to your Google sheet

You selected one year for your date range and the database gives an average for each day.

Reflect on the appropriate data range for which to collect nitrate data. Would a shorter date range (a day, a month) be sufficient for determining if a location has a nitrate problem?  Is there a reason to collect data for more than one year?

Reflect on the appropriate frequency to collect nitrate data. Would more frequent data (e.g, every 15 minutes instead of a daily average) be useful?

Take a glance at the data you collected. What do you notice? According to the Des Moines Register article from July 2015, the Des Moines water system had a nitrate pollution problem. Without using computational tools, can you tell if it still has one?  What about other sites across the state?

Notes

These notes will appear on every page in this lesson so feel free to put anything here you'd like to keep track of.