U.S. Federal Water Quality Web Service Collaboration

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) have developed collaborative capabilities for the retrieval of water quality data using the World Wide Web [Young, 2008]. Since September 2008, these new capabilities have facilitated searches of millions of analytical measurements from water quality samples collected during the past 100 years. The new system improves, in several ways, on the previous approach to obtaining data from these agencies, and it establishes a framework for future enhancements. As a result of creating these capabilities, an investigator will be able to explore the entire USGS and USEPA water quality data holdings without needing to know which agency manages the desired data.