- Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program (SWAMP)
- Water Board program responsible for coordinating all water quality monitoring conducted by the State and Regional Water Boards. In addition, SWAMP promotes collaboration with other entities by proposing conventions related to monitoring design, measurement indicators, data management, quality assurance, and assessment strategies, so that data from many programs can be used in integrated assessments.
- Site Visit
- A Site Visit represents one visit to a site to measure or collect.
- Collections
- There are five Collection Categories - Chemistry, Field, Taxonomy, Tissue, and Toxicity. Each Collection Category summarizes counts of one or more data types (e.g. chemistry, habitat, toxicity, etc.) sampled during the Site Visit. Sample costs vary substantially depending on the data type; for example a field pH measurement costs around $3, while a sediment toxicity identification evaluation costs around $6,300. Field QA including field duplicates and/or blanks are NOT counted.
- Chemistry Collections
- This measure represents the sum of the following data type counts: Water Chemistry and Sediment Chemistry.
Water Chemistry - 1 count represents all water chemistry collected at a single site on a given day regardness of number of parameters to be measured.
Sediment Chemistry - 1 count represents all sediment chemistry collected at single site on a given day regardless of number of parameters to be measured.
- Field Collections
- This measure represents the sum of the following data type counts: Field Measures, Habitat, and Continuous Monitoring.
Field Measures - 1 count represents all field measures taken at a single site on a given day regardless of number of parameters to be measured.
Habitat - 1 count represents any physical habitat observations for bioassessment collections or routine field observations for water quality or tissue collections at a single site on a given day. Each transect is counted towards the total.
Continuous Monitoring - 1 count represents a deployment at a single site spanning a discrete period of time.
- Taxonomy Collections
- This measure represents the sum of the following data type counts: Algae and Benthics.
Algae - 1 count represents algae collections at a single site on a given day.
Benthics - 1 count represents benthic invertebrate collections at a single site on a given day.
- Tissue Collections
- This measure represents the sum of the Tissue data type count.
Tissue - 1 count represents a composite sample, made up of either individuals or multiple fish, at a single site on a given day regardless of number of parameters to be measured. At a single site, each specie collected gets counted.
- Toxicity Collections
- This measure represents the sum of the following data type counts: Water Toxicity and Sediment Toxicity.
Water Toxicity - 1 count represents all water toxicity samples collected at a single site on a given day regardless of number of parameters to be measured.
Sediment Toxicity - 1 count represents all Sediment toxicity samples collected at a single site on a given day regardless of number of parameters to be measured.
- Parameter
- A parameter is a measurable or quantifiable characteristic or feature of water quality, such as temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, sediment, bacteria, metals, nutrients, pesticides, and toxicity.
- Ambient Monitoring
- Ambient monitoring refers to the collection of information about the status of the physical, chemical, toxicological, and biological characteristics of the environment.
- Clean Water Act Section 303(d) List:
- Under the federal Clean Water Act (CWA), states must submit the CWA section 303(d) list to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) every two years. The Water Boards assess water quality data for California's waters to determine if they contain pollutants at levels that exceed protective water quality standards. Waters that exceed their standards are listed as impaired on the State's 303(d) list, or list of impaired waters (also known as water quality limited segments). Since 2010, both the CWA Sections 303(d) list and the CWA Section 305(b) report are being prepared as an Integrated Report. For more information, please see the Integrated Report page.
- Clean Water Act Section 305(b) Report
- The federal CWA Section 305(b) requires each state to report on the quality condition of its waters. The State Water Board submits its water quality condition assessment report to the USEPA every two years. The report provides water quality information to the general public and serves as the basis for USEPA's National Water Quality Inventory Report to Congress. Since 2010, both the CWA Sections 303(d) list and the CWA Section 305(b) report are being prepared as an Integrated Report. For more information, please see the Integrated Report page.
- Impaired Water Body
- An impaired water body is also known as a water quality-limited segment on the State's CWA Section 303(d) list. Impaired waters are listed as specific water body-pollutant combinations that are not meeting protective water quality standards.
- Surface Water
- Waters that are naturally open to the atmosphere such as rivers, lakes, reservoirs, ponds, estuaries, and ocean. These waters form from collected water on the ground, and are naturally replenished through precipitation and naturally lost through evaporation and sub-surface seepage into the groundwater.
