Beech Creek water quality monitoring geospatial dataset

The Beech Creek Watershed stretches across approximately 171 square miles in Centre and Clinton Counties, located in the central region of Pennsylvania. This watershed has been severely impacted by abandoned mine drainage due to historical coal and clay mining in the area (Hedin Environmental, 2006), and the communities in the watershed represent some of the approximately 2.4 million people in the state who live in communities near a stream impaired by abandoned mine drainage. While there exist many water quality monitoring locations throughout the Beech creek from different organizations (e.g., Centre County PA Senior Environmental Corps and reports from Beech Creek Watershed Coldwater Conservation Plan), there is no platform or database. Thus, by addressing the need for a user-friendly GIS Platform (qualitative information gained from interviews as part of this project), we visualized all mentoring locations and initiated a baseline platform for quantifying the spatio-temporal water status of the creek. We used water quality data from publicly available online sources and directly from stakeholder participants from our interview. The data came in multiple formats including shapefiles and data tables. Finally, this data was incorporated into a web-based interactive platform which shows valuable information on where water quality is being monitored. This interactive platform will also indicate values associated to each variable. By translating water quality indicators (pH levels, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, flow trends, macroinvertebrates, and so forth) into geospatially anchored visual narratives, the GIS platform will facilitate broader comprehension and make the restoration progress more accessible and communicable.