Abstract

Using ArcGIS from Start to Finish in Water Quality Monitoring
Track: Water Resources
Authors: Rob Burnes

Water quality monitoring is an important tool for coastal environmental managers. This is especially true in highly developed and urbanized coastal areas. Pinellas County is a highly urbanized county with a population of 900,000 and approximately 180 miles of coastline located on Florida's Gulf Coast. Over the past several years, as budgets tighten and regulations become more stringent, Pinellas County Watershed Management has increasingly utilized ArcGIS for development, quality control, and analysis in its water quality monitoring program. ArcGIS is utilized to create random sampling sites, conduct quality control analysis on the generated data, analyze the data for spatial trends using interpolation techniques, and providing analysis and maps for decision makers and regulatory agencies. The intent of this paper is to show the processes by which we utilize ArcGIS in our program, from random data point generation to analysis using interpolation methods, and everything in between.