BetaBetaDataset
To provide an interactive mapping platform for exploring freshwater water quality conditions and identifying areas where water quality may have been affected by human activities.
The Freshwater Explorer was developed by the EPA to help users visualize and interpret nationwide freshwater quality data from streams, lakes, and groundwater wells by integrating information from the Water Quality Portal (WQP), Water Quality Exchange (WQX), and other EPA geospatial datasets into a single interactive mapping environment.
The platform includes observed and estimated background concentrations for 11 commonly sampled water quality parameters, including alkalinity, ammonia, calcium, chlorophyll a, chloride, conductivity, organic carbon, pH, sulfate, total phosphorus, and total nitrogen. It contains summary statistics for approximately 289,000 stream locations, 10,000 lakes, and 50,000 groundwater wells across all 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The data were collected through water quality monitoring programs conducted by more than 500 federal, state, tribal, and partner organizations and submitted through the Water Quality Exchange (WQX) to the Water Quality Portal (WQP). EPA then curated, harmonized, summarized, and processed the datasets using Tools for Automated Data Analysis (TADA) and geospatial modeling procedures