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SWAMP Resources

State Water Boards: SWAMP

 

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Tools

The SWAMP program includes monitoring strategies and projects to investigate status and trends at statewide scales, as well as more regional and localized and scales.

The keys to a successful monitoring effort include well-framed questions, careful planning, utilizing the appropriate methods for both collection and analysis of samples to develop necessary data, proper chain of custody procedures, secure long-term data storage, data analysis, and interpretive reports of results.

In an effort to make monitoring information more useful across multiple programs, SWAMP has become engaged in describing and implementing comparability and compatibility. At a minimum, this requires standardized methods and formats that ensure monitoring information can fairly be compared across multiple state and federal programs.

There are several ways to evaluate how data are different and the same - from how they are collected to how they are stored to how they are interpreted related to what question they were designed to answer.

To meet these needs, SWAMP has created, and continues to develop, an extensive tool kit for ambient monitoring throughout California. This section provides those tools, and describes those on our list of next steps and identified needs.

Monitoring and Assessment Plans

  • Bioaccumulation Oversight Group (BOG) - A workgroup within the SWAMP program that focuses on bioaccumulation in sport fish found in California waterways
  • Statewide Long-Term Contaminants Trend Monitoring at Watershed Integrator Sites
  • Perennial Streams Assessment (PSA) - During the fiscal year of 07-08, the SWAMP completed the design of a PSA, a statewide survey of the ecological condition of wadeable perennial streams in California. The PSA is a long term statistical survey designed to build upon two successful prior surveys that have collectively sampled over 400 sites statewide:
    • The U.S. EPA’s Western Pilot Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP-West, 2000-2003), and
    • The California Monitoring and Assessment Program (CMAP, 2004-2007).

    The CMAP was a collaborative effort of the US EPA and State Water Board’s Nonpoint Source Program. This newer design consists of biological indicators (benthic macroinvertebrates, algae), chemical constituents (WQ chemistry, nutrients, major ions), and habitat assessments (both for in-stream and for riparian corridors). Approximately 75 - 90 sites will be monitored statewide. These sites are distributed evenly among 6 major geographic sub regions of CA and balanced to enable separate assessments for both agricultural and urban nonpoint source regions.

    Data collected from these sites will be used:

    • To provide condition assessments for all California wadeable perennial streams, estimates of the extent of stream length affected by various major stressors (i.e., nonpoint source (NPS) or polluted runoff, and other), and
    • The relative risk that these stressors pose to aquatic life use in these streams.

    Because the PSA builds on similar previous surveys, these data will enable the SWAMP and NPS programs to produce long-term rolling averages of ecological conditions and estimates of stressor impacts. In addition, the sub-region design will allow the development of separate condition estimates for the major regions of the state and the concentration of NPS sites will allow separate assessments for streams that drain agricultural and urban watersheds.

    The study is in its second year, and California Department of Fish and Game, Aquatic Bioassessment Laboratory (DFG-ABL) field crews performed have reconnaissance on hundreds of sites statewide, with 84 sites sampled last year, and that same number planned for the 2009 field season.

  • Biological Objectives Development - Biological objectives (“bio-objectives”) are very important, because they provide a quantifiable “yardstick” to measure the health of aquatic life that can be easily communicated to decision-makers and the public.

    The National Research Council’s Total Maximum Daily Loading (TMDL) Review Committee (2001) and two recent reviews of California’s assessment programs Scientific Planning and Review Committee 2006, U.S. EPA Critical Elements Review 2009 have all highlighted the urgent need for California to modernize its monitoring, assessment and standards programs by developing biological endpoints. California is well along the path to developing the technical tools and infrastructure needed to directly measure biological endpoints, and is now ready to establish a regulatory framework for using these tools. With adequate resources to develop the regulatory framework for biological objectives and complete the technical elements, California can then provide even more effective tools needed by all stakeholders to gauge the health of California’s streams and rivers.
  • Regional Monitoring Plans

Methods

There are several categories of methods, each being a protocol and/or procedure established prior to collecting specific samples under a monitoring plan. A list of the most common things addressed include:

Data Sources

Data Management

The Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program (SWAMP) Database is a standardized data management, evaluation and reporting system, which serves as the mechanism for data sharing among project participants. Data sharing is required if the SWAMP goal of producing an integrated hydrologic unit assessment of the State's surface waters is to be achieved. While this is the primary focus, the Information Management System (IMS) has been developed with the recognition that SWAMP represents an initial effort toward data standardization among regions, agencies, and laboratories, and that protocols adopted here will be used for data sharing across other projects in the State.

Specific documentation and further information can be found at the Marine Pollution Studies Laboratory at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories Website.

Comparability

Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance (QA) includes activities that ensure that data collected are of adequate quality given the monitoring objectives. Quality Assurance consists of two separate but interrelated activities: Quality Control (QC); and Quality Assessment. Quality control refers to the technical activities employed to ensure that the data collected are adequate given the monitoring objectives to be tested. Quality Assessment activities are implemented to quantify the effectiveness of the quality control procedures.

Some of the steps being taken to ensure that high quality data is produced by SWAMP efforts include:

Tool Development

SWAMP and collaborators have created, and continue to develop, an extensive tool kit for ambient monitoring throughout California. This section provides some of those tools, and will describe those on our list of next steps and identified needs as they are planned.

Indicator Development

  • Water Quality Indicators
  • Compilation of Water Quality Goals - Numerical water quality limits from the literature for over 850 chemical constituents and water quality parameters. The text of the report explains, with examples, how these limits may be used in the context of California's quality standards. A summary of relevant statutes, regulations, plans, and policies and a list of references are included.

 

(Updated 6/30/10 )