Water quality data collection, storage, and access is a difficult task and significant work has gone into methods to store and disseminate these data. We present a tool to disseminate research in a simple method that does not replace but extends and leverages these tools. In the United States, the federal government maintains two systems to fill that role for hydrological data: the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Information System (NWIS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Storage and Retrieval System (STORET), since superseded by the Water Quality Portal (WQP). The Consortium of the Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc (CUAHSI) has developed the Hydrologic Information System (HIS) to standardize search and discovery of these data as well as other observational time series datasets. Additionally, CUAHSI developed and maintains HydroShare.org as a web portal for researchers to store and share hydrology data in a variety of formats including spatial geographic information system data. We present the Tethys Platform based Water Quality Data Viewer (WQDV) web application that uses these systems to provide researchers and local monitoring organizations with a simple method to archive, view, analyze, and distribute water quality data. WQDV provides an archive for non-official or preliminary research data and access to those data that have been collected but need to be distributed prior to review or inclusion in the state database. WQDV can also accept subsets of data downloaded from other sources, such as the EPA WQP. WQDV helps users understand what local data are available and how they relate to the data in larger databases. WQDV presents data in spatial (maps) and temporal (time series graphs) forms to help the users analyze and potentially screen the data sources before export for additional analysis. WQDV provides a convenient method for interim data to be widely disseminated and easily accessible in the context of a subset of official data. We present WQDV using a case study of data from Utah Lake, Utah, United States of America.

A study was made of the ecology and floristics of a small bog lake referred to as Moss Lake, in the Grandaddy lakes region of the Uinta Mountains , Utah . Three consecutive summers, 1948, 1949, and 1950, were spent in collecting the data presented in this study. Throughout the study the following ecological measurements were made: 1. Water 2. Soil 3. Macroscopic vegetation 4. Plankton 5. Macroscopic animal forms.

Provo Bay of Utah Lake, Utah, receives the effluents from farms, industry, and three cities. In order to determine the effects of these effluents, eleven stations were established throughout the Bay. At weekly intervals from June 19 to October 26, 1970, and monthly thereafter until March, 1971, the water at these stations was sampled for dissolved oxygen (DO}, carbon dioxide (CO2), turbidity, pH, phosphates, nitrates, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and coliform bacteria. Due to intense algal blooms, the quality of the water changes as it passes through Provo Bay. Average values for the inflow, mid-Bay, and point of discharge respectively during the summer are as follows: DO, 5.4--10.2--6.9 mg/l; CO2, 38--0--6 mg/l; turbidity, 19--80--57 Jackson Turbidity Units; pH, 7. 5--9. 0--7. 2; phosphates, 3. 62--0. 94--0.15 mg/l; nitrates, 0.71--0.08--0.00 mg/l; BOD, 17--27--9 mg/l; and coliforms, 31,000--31--0/100 ml. These results indicate that during the summer Provo Bay is acting as a tertiary treatment pond for the effluents which it receives.