Cassie Head's GIS Web Portfolio

Water Quality Monitoring Site Assessment
with Pierce Conservation District

        The Pierce Conservation District has been monitoring surface water quality throughout Pierce County for over 20 years. The Stream Team is their citizen volunteer water quality monitoring program whose purpose is to provide “red flag data” to raise awareness about water quality issues and improve local water quality and stream habitat. The data collected from volunteers is submitted to the Washington Nature Mapping Program. Areas that are found to have suffering water quality become sites for remediation projects such as stream clean-ups and revegetation.

        Under the Clean Water Act, surface water quality is held to the standard needed for its most sensitive usage. In the South Puget Sound, salmon is the most sensitive user. Monitors test both water and air temperature, as salmon are sensitive to temperature and most aquatic life can only survive within a narrow range of temperature. In areas with a great deal of streamside erosion, temperature can become higher because of an increased amount of sediment in the water. Dissolved oxygen is also measured in water quality tests. Water that is cooler in temperature can hold more dissolved oxygen, which is better for survival of both plants and animals, especially salmon. Other factors that are tested are nitrates, which often are found in streams because of runoff from fertilizers, pH, and turbidity. 

        For my project, I conducted a location analysis and proposed 40+ new sites for water quality monitoring in 2016 and beyond. For my Water Quality Monitoring Site Assessment project, I took stream data and overlay several factors in order to determine the most effective locations for volunteers to monitor water quality around Pierce County.