Length: 1 year, 4-6 credits per semester or quarter
Each module includes one week of instruction including:
· 3 lectures per week (50 minutes each)
· 1-2 laboratories (or field sessions) per week (2 hours each)

Audience: 2 or 4 year programs focused on Water Resources; Water Science; Water Pollution, Wastewater; Environmental Science; Fisheries and Wildlife, Ecology, Natural Resource Management, Conservation Biology, Limnology, Biology, Forestry, Aquatic Science

Objective: Provide hands on training in technical, analytical, and presentation skills necessary in the fields listed above using a variety of real-time lake and stream data from the Internet, including the Water-on-the-Web data.

Format: Course is divided into six major units totaling up to 30 curriculum modules. Course can be used in its entirety or can be used to supplement existing lectures in pre-existing related courses (text or lecture-note based) as well as field and lab studies.

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UNIT 1 WATERSHED AND AQUATIC SCIENCE FUNDAMENTALS

• Beneficial uses of water (including discussion of pollution)
• Lakes and streams: Human impacts

- Point sources (conventional, toxics)
- Non point source (land use practices, atmospheric deposition, wildlife practices, climate change, etc.)

• Hydrologic cycle
• Groundwater
• Climatic influences (light, temperature, precipitation, wind)
• Land-water interactions
• Ecoregions

MODULE 2-3 LAKE ECOLOGY (LIMNOLOGY)

• Introduction: Lakes are a reflection of their watersheds and climates and lakes are patchy
• Food web dynamics
• Organism and metabolism overview

- Plants, animals, bacteria/fungi (within habitat context, e.g., pelagic, littoral, benthic)
- Productivity (1o, 2 o, respiration, microbial loop)
- Food webs (including bottom up, top down concepts)

• Basins (types and origins, including reservoirs)
• Morphometry (shapes, parameters)
• “Structure” and patchiness (habitat context)

- Physical and chemical factors

· Horizonal (advection)
· Vertical (light, temp, density; O2; stratification; mixing)

- Biological distributions of organisms
- Temporal variations (physical, chemical, biological)

• Biogeochemistry (applied limnology context)

- Major ions
- Nitrogen cycling
- Phosphorus cycling
- Iron and sulfur cycling
- Sediment-water interactions (nutrients/metals release vs DO, Fe, S)

• Eutrophication

- Management of shallow versus deep lakes
- Case studies (e.g., Lakes Washington, Tahoe, Mead, Shagawa, Onandaga, Minnetonka)

• Zooplankton and fish issues (management context)
• Paleolimnology overview
• Reservoir issues
• Other issues (e.g., acid rain, exotic species, Hg, PCBs)

MODULE 4-5 STREAM ECOLOGY

• geomorphology
• hydrology (flow, temperature, light)
• stream chemistry
• organisms (algae, higher plants, invertebrates, fish)
• sediments and sediment-water interactions
• patch origin and characteristics

UNIT 2 EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

MODULE 6 PROBLEM AND OBJECTIVE FORMULATION

• Posing the question – formulating testable hypotheses
• Understanding risk – real v. perceived water resource issues
• Introduction to principles of experimental designs

- Selecting frequency of sampling
- Pre/post; upstream/downstream reference sites

• Establishing goals
• Survey of typical lake and stream water resource issues

UNIT 3 DATA COLLECTION AND RETRIEVAL

MODULE 7 WATERSHED/LANDUSE SURVEYS

• Introduction to Watershed Assessment (check out www.watershednet.com/manual.html)
• Public surveys—question formulation, survey instruments and design
• Identification of watershed issues
• Historical conditions assessment
• Landscape characterization
• Channel habitat type classification
• Hydrology and water use
• Riparian/wetlands assessment
• Sediment sources assessment
• Channel modification assessment
• Watershed characterization of temperature
• Watershed condition evaluation

MODULE 8 LAKE SURVEYS -Field

• Lake morphometry

- graphical (planimetry, count the squares, cut and weigh)
- software (GIS and simpler programs)
- manual and acoustic depth sounding

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• Physical and chemical field profiling

- Temperature, DO, pH, EC, redox (including calibration and maintenance)
- In-situ instruments (data logger calibration and maintenance – SEE MODULE 12)
- Light (Secchi; radiometers)

• Water sampling – manual

- Conventional (Van Dorn, Niskin, bottles, pumps)
- Contaminants (clean techniques)
- Microbes (sterile technique)

• Water sampling – automated
• Zooplankton (e.g., nets, traps)
• Benthos and sediments (e.g., cores, dredges, traps)
• Aquatic vegetation (e.g., visual; grabs; census transects; wetland delineation)
• Fish and fish habitat assessment (e.g., seines; traps; acoustic)
• QA/QC

MODULE 9 LAKE SURVEYS- Laboratory

• Bottle preparation
• Water quality analyses (basic)

- Alkalinity, hardness
- TDS, salinity, EC, color
- TSS, turbidity
- Nutrients (N and P – principles of colorimetry)

• Water chemistry kits
• Microbiology (e.g., fecal coliform. E.coli)
• Specific ion probes (e.g., chloride, ammonium)
• Ions (IC, AAS overviews)
• Chlorophyll-a (extractions; spectrophotometric and fluorometric methods)
• Phytoplankton assessment (rapid scans; quantitative microscopy)
• QA/QC

MODULE 10-11 STREAM SURVEYS

• Water quality assessment
• Field instrumentation (WQ meters, flow metering, data loggers)
• Water sampling (USGS Manual methods; pumps; remote samplers)
• Organism collection
• Biotic parameters

- Rapid bioassessment protocols for wadeable streams (www.epa.gov/owow/monitoring/rbp; physical, chemical, and biotic characteristics)

• Fish and fish habitat assessment (e.g., seines, traps, acoustic)

MODULE 12 REMOTE SENSING AND INTERNET DATA SOURCES

• Satellite and aircraft imaging
• Satellite and aircraft sensors
• Automated in situ data loggers, samplers and modems (e.g., YSI, Hydrolab, RUSS)
• Sonar, hydroacoustics
• Radar
• Federal databases (e.g., STORET, BASINS, USGS)

UNIT 4 DATA MANAGEMENT

MODULE 13 QUALITY ASSURANCE AND QUALITY CONTROL

• Precision and accuracy (e.g., variance, spikes, data tracking and control charts, calibrations; Best Professional Judgment); closely linked to Module 17 Statistics
• Good Laboratory Practices
• Quality Assurance Project Plans (QAPPs)

MODULE 14 DATA TYPES, SOURCES AND RETRIEVAL

• Meta data
• Structuring spreadsheets and relational databases
• Essential information
• Spatial versus non-spatial data sets

MODULE 15 SPREADSHEETS AND NONSPATIAL DATABASES

• Software (e.g., Excel, Quattro Pro, Access)
• Using spreadsheets and databases to answer questions – case studies

- Querying spreadsheets and databases

• Survey of RDMS software

MODULE 16 GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS (GIS)

• Maps as data (points, lines, polygons, objects)
• Polygon versus raster-based
• Software survey
• Data input (GPS, scanning) and data delivery
• Spatial data sets and analysis functions

UNIT 5 DATA ANALYSIS, INTERPRETATION, AND PRESENTATION

MODULE 17 ELEMENTARY STATISTICS

• Significant figures
• Measures of variation (e.g., mean, median, mode, skew, standard deviation, RPD, CV)
• Interpolation, extrapolation
• Hypothesis testing
• Principles of exploratory data analysis (EDA)

- Traditional EDA techniques
- Emerging EDA techniques
- Survey of EDA software

MODULE 18 APPLICATIONS OF REGRESSION TO WATER QUALITY ANALYSIS

• Basic concepts and applications
• Basic linear regression
• Detecting and analyzing trends
• Curve fitting with Excel
• Assumptions and limitations of regression analysis
• Regression software survey

MODULE 19 GIS/SPATIAL ANALYSIS

• Vector analyses (e.g., unions, intersections, clipping, buffer analyses)
• Raster analyses (e.g., neighborhood statistics, interpolation, filtering)
• Patch statistics (e.g., survey, assumptions and use)

MODULE 20 DATA VISUALIZATION AND PRESENTATION

• Basic graphical techniques and software
• Data visualization techniques

MODULE 21 INTRODUCTION TO MODELING

• Underlying assumptions of models
• Limitations of models
• Types of models (e.g., conceptual, empirical, mechanistic)
• Applications of models

- Pollutant loads (e.g., TMDLs)
- Lake water quality (e.g., WILMS and other spreadsheet models)
- Streams (e.g., In-stream Flow Incremental Methodology – IFIM)
- Stormwater, urban runoff

UNIT 6 MANAGEMENT POLICY AND OUTREACH

MODULE 22 REGULATIONS AND COMPLIANCE MONITORING

• Introduction to risk management

- Health-based risks
- Ecological risks
- Risk assessment process (hazard ID, exposure, dose-response, risk characterization, risk management and communication)

• Clean Water Act (CWA)

o Regulating point sources (e.g., NPDES, receiving water nutrient criteria)
o Regulating nonpoint sources (e.g., TMDL process)

• Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)
• Clean Air Act (e.g., acid rain, Hg)
• Hazardous Waste

- CERCLA (Superfund)
- SARA (Superfund amendments and reauthorization)
- Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)
- Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA: solid and hazardous wastes)
- Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)

• State and local jurisdiction
• Where to go for information

MODULE 23 WATERSHED MANAGEMENT

• Organizational resources
• Comprehensive land use planning
• Involving stakeholders

- Conflict resolution
- Volunteer monitoring

• Typical issues

- Shoreland development
- Water extraction/quantity
- Water diversion
- Water reuse
- Wetland draining
- Flood plain management
- TMDL process

MODULE 24-25 LAKE AND STREAM RESTORATION

• Lake restoration techniques and case studies

- Physical and chemical methods (e.g., nutrient inactivation, dredging, aeration/circulation)
- Biological methods (e.g., biomanipulation, macrophyte management)

• Stream restoration techniques and case studies

- Physical and chemical methods (e.g., channelization, gradient, flow, cover, dam removal)
- Biological methods (e.g., biomanipulation, riparian management)

MODULE 26 COMMUNITY EDUCATION AND INVOLVEMENT

• Risk communication
• Role in shoreland, coastal zone and watershed management
• Presenting technical information to non-technical audience
• Available resources (e.g., EPA EMPACT case studies, web resources, educational sources and organizations)
• Working with the media

MODULE 27 EDUCATING DECISION-MAKERS

• Risk communication
• Bringing data to decision-makers

- Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO)
- EPA EMPACT
- Case Studies

• Comprehensive land use planning
• Effective presentation skills

- Oral and poster techniques
- Presentation software