Managing 30 Years' of Continuous Coastal Data Collection via Water Data for Texas

Texas has 367 miles of coastline within which 11 river basins and 8 coastal basins deliver fresh water from surface run-off, rivers, and streams into individual bays. The Texas Water Development Board (TWDB), in partnership with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), has continuously monitored estuarine salinity and water quality since 1986. Managing 30 years of continuous data collected by multiple personnel using instruments of different manufacturers and technologies creates daunting challenges in quality assurance, analysis, and distribution to the public. The Water Data for Texas coastal repository (waterdatafortexas.org) was created as a platform for external partners to upload, manage, QA, and share coastal water quality data to the public. Features such as user management, inventory control, and innovative quality assurance enable seamless integration of over 2,500 instrument deployments since 1986 with tens of millions of data points across the Texas Gulf Coast.