Ambient Stream Quality Monitoring Sites of New Jersey

The Ambient Surface Water Quality Monitoring Network (ASWQMN) is a cooperative effort between the Bureau of Freshwater and Biological Monitoring and USGS’ New Jersey Water Science Center. The network was established in 1976 to determine status and trends of surface waters in New Jersey. A 1997 network revision focused on supporting water quality initiatives in each of NJDEP's newly created watershed management areas, the functional units for DEP's Watershed Initiatives. General ASWQMN objectives include:continued tracking of status and trends in ambient water quality, establish background water quality by physiographic province, provide data from a set of randomly selected sites to assess water quality state wide (1998 – 2011), provide data from set of selected sites in priority regions, basins, and/or watersheds (2011 – present), obtain water quality data that can be correlated with specific land uses (urban, mixed, agricultural and undeveloped), and coordinate the collection of water chemistry and biological data at common locations. Core network parameters, measured quarterly include: discharge(flow), field parameters, total and filtered nutrients and filtered ions. Supplemental parameters, collected at a subset of stations and at a reduced frequency include: diurnal D.O., pesticides, total recoverable metals, VOCs (1998 – 2003), sediment nutrients, sediment metals and sediment PAH's.