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Loading water monitoring data into STORET provides a means
for volunteers to share data with each other as well as a way to provide long-term
information to scientists and the general public. Often volunteer collected
data is the only long-term data available on a waterbody. Scientists may have
come in from elsewhere to collect data for a year or two but the people who live
there and watch the water all the time for many years are the only ones contributing
lasting information. If that information sits in your own computer or in
a notebook no one else will know about it. Sharing your data will improve
volunteer "voices" regarding water quality in Montana. If your
data cannot go into STORET because some information is missing, we can still
use it for graphing and making volunteer/school reports.
The acronym stands for data STOrage and RETreval system. It was a revolutionary
development by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the 1960’s
and continues to serve as a data sharing and management warehouse. STORET is
EPA's main repository of water quality monitoring data. It contains water quality
information from a variety of organizations across the country, from small volunteer
watershed groups to State and Federal environmental agencies.
When you upload your spreadsheet to this site, the administrator at Montana
Watercourse will receive an email. The administrator then works to transform
and upload your data to STORET through a program called SIM (STORET Importation
Module). The Montana Watercourse works with Montana DEQ to keep the Montana Volunteer
SIM configuration up to date. (DEQ helps other data collectors like their employees
and consulting firms get their data through SIM, too.) If you formatted your
data correctly in the template form, it should go through SIM with no trouble.
If there is a problem or you forgot a field or misspelled your station ID, your
data will not transform and upload. In this case the administrator will try to
fix the problem or you will get an email back from the administrator regarding
the additional information needed. SIM sends the data to a regional warehouse.
During this time, Montana Volunteer data can be accessed by the administrator
or through the data retrieval function of this MTVWM website. Once a month, the
regional warehouse is uploaded to the national STORET database. After this happens,
your data will be available for anyone across the country to access at the National
STORET web site.
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