What I want to do this week is think about what goes into collecting large amounts of groundwater data for regional or aquifer-wide evaluation. Them we will work down to watershed and smaller scales. I have several case studies plus one internet study, http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/ .

Reading
Artiola Chapter 2

http://www.epa.gov/quality/
Guidance on Choosing a Sampling Design for Environmental Data Collection (QA/G-5S) EPA/240/R-02/005 December 2002
Chapter 2 is an overview, In the chapters for each design it presents applications, statistics, and more background for each method.

Systematic Planning: A Case Study for Hazardous Waste Site Investigations EPA QA/CS-1
Background on Site Planning
Read for site investigation practices
http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~nsu/starmap/learningmaterials/aquatics-a4.pdf

NAQWA
http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/about.html
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309083052

Watersheds
http://www.epa.gov/owow/nps/MMGI/index.html

Why monitor?
What was the purpose of the study, the questions to be answered?
How big was the area surveyed?
How was the survey designed to answer the questions?
How was the data collected?
If new data was gathered, how was the number of sampling points determined? What if any statistics were used?
Where were samples collected relative to distribution and/or treatment?
How were samples collected and by whom?
Over what time period were the samples collected? Any considerations of climatic patterns?
What other data (other than water quality) was collected as part of the study?
How was that done?

What does it mean to be representative of the target?
If using existing wells how do you choose them?

What types of sampling schemes are there?
How do you address temporal variability in large-scale surveys?
What is NAQWA?
How would you develop a watershed study?
What are the procedures for developing a site study?