Monitoring Areawide Rural Water Quality

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Abstract
Stream water quality is usually measured by either grab or automated sampling schemes. Data obtained by these two methods at identical locations on rural watersheds demonstrated that sampling techniques themselves impacted measured water quality values. Point-in-time comparisons indicated that COD and TOC concentrations were lower for grab than automated samples due to sample procurement and storage effects. A first sample effect was also demontrated for COD, TOC, TP, and TKN concentrations by analysis of sequential samples obtained with automated samplers employing a sample-flush operational mode. The areawide annual water yield estimate obtained by simple time stratified grab sampling was approximately equal to the historical average, but the precision of individual site estimates was low because the distributions of flow measurements at the sites were highly skewed. Therefore, the potential of daily rainfall predictions as a stratification method to provide increased annual water yield precision at a given sampling frequency or budget level was demonstrated.

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