Learn More: Watershed Scale Water Quality Status

Water quality status and trends are part of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Integrated Water Resources Monitoring network. The program characterizes watershed conditions (status) and determines whether those conditions are changing over time (trends). The network is used to evaluate water resources statewide and conditions/trends are reported in the 305(b) statewide assessment.

Waterbodies have been selected for this monitoring network if: 1) 1990 and 1992 305(b) assessments showed poor, fair, or unknown water quality in the watershed, and 2) there was an absence of recent (latest 5 year period) data. For waterbodies classified as unknown, priority was given to areas with expected threats or impairments.

For 1998 data, the entire state was subdivided into 4,934 watersheds. For 2000 data, 5,126 watersheds were delineated.

The percentages were calculated by intersecting Atlas watershed boundaries with the FDEP 305(b) watershed boundaries. Areas of the new polygons were calculated using an ArcView script. Percentages were then calculated based on the total Atlas Watershed area and overall water quality and trend percentages were then tabulated in Microsoft Excel. Percentages may not add up to 100 due to rounding.

Atlas watershed boundaries were compared to FDEP basin (watershed) boundaries. As the two delineations do not agree, the FDEP data was overlain using GIS and statistics generated from statistics of coincident geographic boundaries.

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