Florida’s Coral Reef Water Quality Data Compilation, Analysis, and Decision Support Year 2

This project complied existing water quality data in Florida and provided recommendations on how that data could be combined to create a decision support tool for Florida’s Coral Reef. 93 water quality monitoring programs were identified in Florida and filtered against five criteria: (1) Sampled within South Florida; (2) Sampled at least four water quality parameters of interest (i.e., Chlorophyll-a, temperature, salinity, nitrate+nitrite (NOx), soluble reactive phosphorus (PO4), silica (Si), turbidity, total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphorus (TP); (3) Contains unique sampling data (i.e., not a derivative dataset from another program, or uploaded to multiple portals); (4) Is still actively sampling; (5) Has at least five years of data. Of the 93 programs, only five met all of these criteria. It was recommended that data from other programs could be compared through a trend analysis but must consistent sampling over time would be needed to estimate a meaningful trend.