Water Quality

WET Labs Water Quality Monitors (WQMs) are deployed on 9 of the ten buoys throughout the Chesapeake Bay and record the water temperature, conductivity/salinity, pressure, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll and turbidity. The Gooses Reef buoy uses a YSI 6600 water quality sonde which measures the same parameters as the WQM with the addition of pH. The WQM/YSI are located about a meter below the surface and both report hourly.

Water quality sensors are deployed on all ten buoys throughout the Chesapeake Bay.

The data is all available free to the public in real-time on the following website: http://buoybay.noaa.gov. The files with custom date ranges are available to download in .csv file format. The data can also be accessed at other sites, including http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/ .

The data are all available and free to the public with no data access constraints.

Currently, the CBIBS data is quality controlled in the CBIBS middleware system acting on incoming data. The data gets associated with a QC flag based on threshold values set for each parameter and the buoy status. The various flags include: -1 = Unknown(NaN), 0 = Good Data, 1 = Buoy Offline, 2 = Hard Limit Test Failed, 3 = Filled Value. The data will continue to be quality controlled in this way until QARTOD (Quality Assurance of Real-Time Ocean Data) standards are implemented or if the QARTOD standards are not used for a particular parameter.

QARTOD QC Tests will be applied in a module of the CBIBS middleware, acting on incoming data at 60 minute intervals and returning resultant flag values, which are stored with the data. Parameters for the tests, which can vary by Buoy, Sensor, Measurement Parameter, and Test Type, are stored in a dynamically accessible and editable QC Test matrix. There are Primary and Secondary Flags; Primary flags represent overall Data Quality, based on QARTOD Tests; Secondary flags complement the first level by providing the justification for the quality flags, based on quality control tests or data processing history.

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All data operations and storage take place on secure FISMA-compliant servers.

The WQMs and YSI are given power at 52 minutes past the hour and take measurements over a 5 minute duration. The results are averaged and reported hourly in ASCII format to the Watchman500. The Watchman500 then transmits the data strings via a cellular antenna to a shoreside server. Here, the data are processed (including administering any necessary Qa/Qc flags) and are uploaded to the website hourly in real time.