Are there adequate numbers of monitoring stations nationwide to assess future trends in nutrient concentration in streams?
No. Years of flat funding combined with increased monitoring costs has greatly reduced the number of monitoring stations and the amount of data collected in a given year. NAWQA’s ability to assess future trends at the national scale will depend on restoring or increasing the number monitoring stations and amount of data collected at those sites. Long-term data collection at fixed monitoring stations are important for identifying and understanding water-quality trends, estimating loads, and supporting the development of improved modeling and statistical tools for extrapolation and forecasting.
