I'm not sure which specific regions or watersheds you're interested in Neale, but Environment Canada produces some good data. Here's the website: http://www.ec.gc.ca/eaudouce-freshwater/default.asp?lang=En&n=EFDA57C6-1

I would probably ask that question of Mazama Science (www.mazamascience.com). Options depend on the type and amount of data you have and what you really want to do with it.With open source software many efforts and done for that specific data set. Oracle has some great tools and business applications that agencies use. I know several people to talk to on this so if you don't get the response you need here please email me.

Perhaps the best way to get data is to determine the governmental agency charged with assessing the specific body of water you need data on and check first their web site and depending on what you find, then make a formal contact (phone or letter or email) to someone at that agency. Some data may be available electronically and some may not depending on the group collecting the information and how savvy they are about making it available. Data from the early 1920's to 1950's may still be in reports and books not or never to be on line. I found data on bacteria in the Merrimack River but then the library put the books in remote storage. It is available but hard to get to. I developed models based on data obtained from town drinking water based, on hand written entries in books provided by the municipal agency at the time responsible for the data but it tok time on my part. I think you may have to do the "detective" work yourself and just work hard to find the data you need, and since you may have to deal with humans and not your lap top, don't forget to t.hank him or her for helping you.

It isn't clear if you are looking for software to handle data or for the data itself. Most data will be exported as ASCII files from big databases so it really depends on the software you want to use to manipulate it as to how easy it will be to use. As people have said above, the data are likely located in either municipal or regional council files for local watersheds. National-based data in New Zealand are likely with GNS Science (groundwater) or NIWA (surface water). They likely have most of their data in electronic format. If you are looking for international data, the USGS runs the US National Water Information System (NWIS) that has all data collected by the USGS (and some other agencies) since they began collecting data. This is a web-based data system and the data are freely available.

Apologies if the original question was not clear - I am actually looking for recommendations regarding database software/applications etc - NOT data. We have enough data, and know where to get local data if we need it. We are having trouble storing, quality assuring and coding, retrieving and visualising the data we hold. These issues appear to be reasonably widespread across New Zealand - they are likely to crop up in other places as well. Thanks for your comments to date. Regards Neale

These problems are certainly not limited to NZ!!! :-). Just about any government agency or university research group world-wide is struggling with storage, retrieval, data grading, visualization, and dissemination. There is a gradient of software prices, of course, from freeware to quite expensive.

One useful free data-grading (quality assuring/coding) application is the Java-based GR, http://ca.water.usgs.gov/program/sfbay/gr/gr_win.html. Aquatic Informatics in Vancouver BC Canada offers Aquarius (www.aquaticinformatics.com), a commercial program that is definitely not free, but is very flexible and powerful. It can in principle either interface with your database server or act as the database itself. We tried it sever years ago, but had difficulties getting it to interface properly with our existing database. Their "glue" software has undoubtedly improved since then. Aquarius offers a flexible "breadboard" user interface for linking together the different functions in the data flow, data grading "metadata" (logging who corrected the data and why), etc.

I'm less familiar with general-purpose applications that will enable GIS-linked visualization- most seem to be anchored to a specific geographic location (e.g., the USGS NWIS, California's CDEC, the US-Canada CoCoRaHS volunteer rain gage network), and thus would require extensive changes to apply to your locale(s). Kisters' WISKI and Hydstra software are commercial database and data grading software. They're based in NA, but here is an example from your neighbors in Oz: http://www.kisters.net/KiWQM-NOWproject.html

For general-purpose time series analysis, I've been a decades-long fan of Igor Pro (Igor, the scientist's assistant, get it?) from WaveMetrics, Inc., Portland, Oregon, USA.

There are probably dozens of others, but these are a few with which I'm familiar.

Indeed, the USGS NWIS database will be redesigned into Aquarius software over the next 5 years. Not a simple task and far from free. Because each Regional Council and national institutes all have their own databases, it seems like it might be an opportunity to try to link or have a common format for databases from individual entities. Certainly a discussion with the other database holders might help determine a direction either for Hawkes Bay or for al or most of the water data information groups?

Hi Neale

I've added some information on a water quality database package developed in Tasmania (in association with EPA and Bureau of Meteorology) that could be suitable for your needs. The information below is provide by Daniel Ray, from Aquatic Science, who co-developed and maintains the software ([email protected]). Please feel free to contact him if you have any further queries, or would like to be put in touch with an end-user for a reference (industry, EPA, or NRM groups)..

"The Schooner software package is a water quality database system that has been developed specifically for water quality data. The Schooner Package is made up of 3 sub programs called Splash-Back, Eddy and Spigot. The Splash-Back program enables users to run queries and carryout rapid and sophisticated analysis of the water quality data. Users that import data onto the database will also have to become familiar with the Eddy and Spigot programs.

The database handles grab or "point" data, depth profiles, time-series and calculation of mass loads.

The following webcast describe some of the functionality of the Splash-Back program, which is written with vba (Excel) and also utilises IDL for graphics.

The webcasts are 2 to 5 minutes each.

Introduction and ‘Parameters over Time’ analysis

http://www.screencast.com/t/NejVb2gc8

‘Parameter versus Parameter’ analysis

http://www.screencast.com/t/qWtbbKwWyy

‘Data Summary’ analysis

http://www.screencast.com/t/ES9kwcO5

‘Multi-site Data Summary’ analysis

http://www.screencast.com/t/Ywys98AN0G8b

Multi-site box and whisker

http://www.screencast.com/t/mKOqm0FaYpIB

Multi Date Range box and Whisker analyses

http://www.screencast.com/t/MNg5Hhaae

Depth Profile Analyses:

Multi-Parameter Depth Profile Analysis

http://www.screencast.com/t/HcTDYR5cPc

Multi-Site Depth Profile Analysis

http://www.screencast.com/t/7KcmHD407W

Multi-Date Depth Profile Analysis

http://www.screencast.com/t/L5OTF4BgK7G

The ‘Eddy’ and ‘Spigot’ program facilitates the rapid import of data from a wide variety of data outputs. Eddy is written with vba within Excel and utilises Excel functionality to enable the efficient handling of data while ‘Spigot’ is a java based program ensure that data integrity rules are strictly adhered to. The following webcast is an example of depth profile data being imported into the system.

http://www.screencast.com/t/ga0Wn4S6I

Spigot also enables the manual entry of data and the calculation of mass loads (fluxes) from both spot flow measurement and time series data. Once mass loads are generated they can be viewed and analysed by Splash-back in the same manner as concentration data."

Hi Neale, take a look at the ewater WQ analyser. http://www.ewater.com.au/products/ewater-toolkit/eco-tools/water-quality-analyser/. It is affordable and possibly worth investigating further. Lucy.

GEMSTAT is a water quality database produced by the United Nations Global Environment Monitoring System (GEMS) Water Programme and is dedicated to providing environmental water quality data and information of the highest integrity, accessibility and interoperability. These data are used in water assessments and capacity building initiatives around the world.

GEMStat is designed to share surface and ground water quality data sets collected from the GEMS/Water Global Network, including more than 3,000 stations, close to four million records, and over 100 parameters.

Thanks Neale for your question, I have also benefited from the answers that have been contributed.

National agencies collect this data are usually willing to give it to you free of charge. For Example the UK - SEPA and Environment Agency, USA - USGS and possibly NOAA I

Hi folks

Many thanks for all the useful suggestions. We are currently investigating a few of them and will keep you posted on the outcomes. Migrating data from a less-than-perfect database to another one certainly raises a whole lot of questions about the data itself. Improving data management is all about hardware, software AND the data. And then you still have to analyses it!

Kind regards Neale