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The objective of this national project is to increase the capacity of the USDA Water Quality Network (NIWQP) to share critical information with peer institutions, partner agencies, specific target audiences, the public and other stakeholders. This will enable the network to have an increased impact on science-based decision making and management practices related to water quality. <P>A secondary objective is to facilitate increased collaboration between the NIWQP and several other university-based research and outreach networks: the NOAA Sea Grant network, and the USDA/NASA/NOAA National Geospatial Technology Extension Network (NGTEN).<P> Expected results include: (1) there will be an overall increase within the NIWQP network of knowledge about the range of new geospatial technologies for communicating the results of research and outreach projects; (2) there will be a proliferation of mashup/GPS sites incorporated into NIWQP watershed, extension, and regional project websites, (3) there will be increased visibility, accessibility and use of NIWQP-generated data, maps, and information by agricultural, rural, and urbanizing communities. <P>Outputs include: a geospatial capacity survey of the NIWQP Network; development of several geospatial training workshops; training sessions at the FY10-FY13 NIQWP national conferences; one regional training per year; two webinars per year; development of a project website; and Map@Syst eXtension website enhancements.
Non-Technical Summary: Recent advances in geospatial technologies have provided new methods for effectively conveying geographic data, images, maps and information on water quality research, education and outreach. These technologies, which include online interactive mapping, ?mashup? technologies, open source GIS and other methods, hold tremendous potential for improving the knowledge base available to agricultural, rural, and urbanizing communities. However, the widespread use of these technologies within the USDA Water Quality network and the many communities it serves is hampered by a lack of capacity to make use of these evolving techniques. We propose to bridge that gap by providing education and training on these techniques to water quality researchers, educators, and extension agents, enabling them to use these technologies to make their research and outreach more visible, accessible, and useful. A particular focus will be "mashup" technologies that allow researchers and others to display their data on the web through an "earth browser" website like Google Earth or Google Maps. Our expected outcomes will be that members of USDA's National Integrated Water Quality Program from around the nation will create new websites that more easily and intuitively relate their project results to the public and other stakeholders. <P> Approach: A survey using the Survey Monkey website will be sent to all participants in the NIWQP network to ascertain their level of geospatial expertise, and their needs regarding training. Existing workshops will continue to be tested in the Northeast Region, and new workshops developed (pending the results of the survey). Training workshops will be held at the FY10, FY11, FY12 and FY13 NIWQP national conferences, in conjunction with the conference organizers and the project Advisory Committee, which will meet (by phone) at least once a year to provide perspective and advice to the UConn/URI project team. The project team will also work with the Regional Project P.I.s to conduct one tailored regional training per year. For those unable to attend a training, the project will provide webinars and a project website including tutorials and resources. The "Map@Syst" portion of the eXtension website will also be enhanced and linked to this project. In addition to the Advisory Committee providing up-front input, training sessions will be evaluated via personal and web surveys of the trainees, and via consultation with the regional PIs. Trainees will be expected to forward information (website URLs, website usage statistics) to the project team so that the project can accurately portray the breadth and diversity of the websites resulting from this project.