Thank you for attending!

SPARROW 
Surface-Water Quality Modeling Workshop 2002

October 29-31, 2002
National Center
Reston, Virginia

 Sponsored by the USGS National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program

 

Ø     Workshop Agenda
The agenda includes links to the presentations given at the workshop.

Ø     Workshop Critique

Ø     Attendees List

 

This 3-day workshop provided an introduction to SPARROW (SPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed attributes), a recently developed technique for modeling the occurrence and transport of contaminants in surface waters through statistical analysis of network monitoring and watershed attribute data.  SPARROW has been applied to surface-water nutrients, pesticides, suspended sediment, and fecal bacteria, and is applicable to other measures of water quality, stream biology and streamflow.

Presentations during the first day provided background on the modeling technique and illustrate applications to research and management issues.  More detailed presentations and discussions during the following two days provided participants with the essential information for developing and applying basic SPARROW models.

 

Workshop topics:

·   Results from regional, national, and international applications

·   Management applications (e.g., source characterization, targeting of controls, TMDLs)

·   Research applications (e.g., the evaluation of hydrologic and biogeochemical processes)

·   Guidelines for developing SPARROW models

·   Statistical methods for load estimation, nonlinear parameter estimation, uncertainty analysis

·   GIS methods for developing and managing watershed data

·   Computer software

 

Those who attended the workshop were managers and researchers interested in using the results of existing calibrated models or developing new models.  Developers of new models will require access to watershed data covering a range of environmental conditions to achieve accurate model calibration.  Typical data requirements include stream concentrations and pollutant sources that vary over more than one order of magnitude.  Water-quality records should be at least 2 years long from a network of more than 20 monitoring sites.  Knowledge of the computer software language used in SPARROW (SAS, Fortran) is not required to attend the workshop, but a basic knowledge of SAS will be required to develop simple SPARROW models; a fuller knowledge of SAS is required to make extensive modifications to the model.

 

Please visit the following website for additional information about SPARROW:


SPARROW-Spatially Referenced Regressions On Watershed Attributes

 

If you have any questions regarding the material presented regarding this workshop, please send the following information via email to:  

Richard Alexander ralex@usgs.gov or call (703) 648-6869.


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