Weekly RUSS Data:

Every four to six hours, the RUSS units collect raw data on several different parameters including: temperature, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, pH, % oxygen saturation, and electrical conductivity. These readings are then posted to our website on a weekly basis for access by students and teachers across the country. Using any simple spreadsheet program, this data can be transformed into graphs to help visualize the change of each parameter over time versus depth. Currently, data are available in three different formats:

1. Current weekly RUSS data comes in two forms, HTML and Excel. Webpage (HTML) data lists the data collected during the chosen week on a simple webpage. This form is recommended for easy access for people who do not have a spreadsheet program or for those who may have difficulty downloading through a firewall. The weekly data is also available in Excel spreadsheet files.
2. Total data files are compressed files containing a complete listing of the data collected by the RUSS on the specified lake. The data is stored as comma separated values (csv files) which can be read by spreadsheet and database applications.

Station Status

Unfortunately, RUSS units aren't on-line every day of the year. Units are occaisonally off-line for service, or may be removed from some sites seasonally. This page will show you the current status of the monitoring equipment.

QA Log

Proper Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA/QC) protocols are essential to WOW. We have gone to great lengths to assure the accuracy of our data. The QA log will alert you to corrections or deletions that have been made to the data files as a result of these protocols.

Online Tools for Data Visualization

The WOW project is dedicated to bringing innovative ways to learn about the scientific world. The following tools are interactive visualization programs that can be used online to view specific types of data, manipulate variables, or even see changes over time. To use these program, all you need is a browser that runs Java version 1.1 applets. Netscape and Internet Explorer versions 4 and higher have this capability. If you are behind a firewall the standalone Profile Plotter and Color Mapper programs may be unable to communicate with our data server. The DVTools versions use a different method to get the data and should not have any trouble with firewalls.

1. Profile Plotter is a program that displays interactive line graphs. Users can choose from a number of different variables to plot and then run the program to see how those variables change over time. Simple plotting of a variable versus depth can show how the location of the thermocline varies with time and can illustrate events such as spring and winter turnover or even year to year variability. This program is meant to be used with current RUSS data and runs online.
2. Color Mapper is a visually appealing program which takes data and creates color maps combined with line plots for any 2 RUSS parameters for any lake. It steps through individual data profiles to create animations as per the Profile Plotter.
3. DVT Toolkit is a collection of programs -- it includes the Profile Plotter, the Color Mapper, and a third program, the Depth vs. Time Plotter (DxT). The DVT Toolkit can be run on-line, or downloaded and run without an Internet connection.