Hello,
I'm doing a bit of research on how consulting firms and hydraulic modelers accomplish their environmental data collection, specifically obtaining flow rates, contaminant concentration, temperature, dissolved oxygen, etc... in rivers, lakes, and near shore coastal environments. Many times, data logged by the government (a USGS bubbler at a gaging station, for example) will be spotty, or at the very least, of questionable accuracy.
When you require this type of information for a project, how do you go about getting it? Do you have an "in-house" shop that can go collect this data? Do you contract it out? Do you use publicly available data collected by a government agency? Or do you simply *not* gather the data at all and qualify the results of your study?
I'm curious to hear about others' experience with this problem of getting reliable environmental data.
Thanks.
(This will also be posted in the Civil Engineering Forum)
I'm doing a bit of research on how consulting firms and hydraulic modelers accomplish their environmental data collection, specifically obtaining flow rates, contaminant concentration, temperature, dissolved oxygen, etc... in rivers, lakes, and near shore coastal environments. Many times, data logged by the government (a USGS bubbler at a gaging station, for example) will be spotty, or at the very least, of questionable accuracy.
When you require this type of information for a project, how do you go about getting it? Do you have an "in-house" shop that can go collect this data? Do you contract it out? Do you use publicly available data collected by a government agency? Or do you simply *not* gather the data at all and qualify the results of your study?
I'm curious to hear about others' experience with this problem of getting reliable environmental data.
Thanks.
(This will also be posted in the Civil Engineering Forum)