Chesapeake Bay Coordinated Split Sample Program Annual Report, 1990-1991: Analytical Methods and Quality Assurance Workgroup of the Chesapeake Bay Program Monitoring Subcommittee

摘要

The Chesapeake Bay Program is a federal-state partnership with a goal of restoring the Chesapeake Bay. Its ambient water quality monitoring programs, started in 1984, sample over 150 monitoring stations once or twice a month a month. Due to the size of the Bay watershed (64,000 square miles) and the cooperative nature of the CBP, these monitoring programs involve 10 different analytical laboratories. The Chesapeake Bay Coordinated Split Sample Program (CSSP), initialed in 1988, assesses the comparability of the water quality results from these laboratories. The report summarizes CSSP results for 1990 and 1991, its second and third full years of operation. The CSSP has two main objectives: identifying parameters with low inter-organization agreement, and estimating measurement system variability. The identification of parmeters with low agreement is used as part of the overall Quality Assurance program. Laboratory and program personnel use the information to investigate possible causes of the differences, and take action to increase agreement if possible. Later CSSP results will document any improvements in inter-organization agreement. The variability estimates are most useful to data analysts and modelers who need confidence estimates for monitoring data.