Reports

The purpose of this web page is to provide information about the projects I am working on at Southern DataStream:

1. Oxbow Golf Club and Port Labelle Inn website

2. Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) Database

1. Oxbow Golf Club and Port Labelle Inn website

In my first week as an intern at Southern DataStream, I develop the Spanish web site from the Oxbow Golf Club and Port LaBelle Inn. I translated 45 Web pages from English to Spanish. I also translated the keywords from some of these web pages, which will help people to find Oxbow’s website by using search engines. This task was performed with Frank's help, who has settled the structure of the web page. The purpose of these translations is to have the hotel web pages in different languages so they can expand their business and get customers from many countries, and in my case, from Spanish-speaking countries (not only from Spain). You can see the result of this task in the Oxbow Golf Spanish webpage.

I search in Internet travel agencies and golf courses in Spain. I enter this information in an Access Database, which will be published later in Internet. I also insert some of the travel agencies links in the main web page. This information will be helpful for the hotel since they need to have contacts in other countries, and also for people who are visiting the web page.

Finally, I submitted the URL of the Spanish version of the Oxbow Golf Club in several search engines, in order for users to find this web page. First in the Spanish version of the worldwide most famous search engines like Yahoo, Excite, Alta Vista, Google, and later in the pure Spanish search engines like Terra, Ya, Navegalia, Ozu. Hopefully this will make this web page available for many Spanish interested users.

2. Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) Database

The water quality samples from Buch Island are collected in order to serve as a field reference guide. All these samples and spreadsheet is done to assure the quality of water or concentrations of the nutrients in water to improve it.

There are two different types of samplings:

• ISCO Sampling: Surface water samples are collected from each canal using an ISCO portable automatic water sampler interfaced with a programmable datalogger/controller (CR10x).
• GRAB Sampling: Short holding time parameters samplings are collected manually as grab samplers on a weekly basis depending of flow at tray replacement time.

In addition to standard samples, the field technicians collect equipment blanks (EB), field cleaned equipment blanks (FB), split samples (SS), and field duplicate samples (FD).

The information contained on the QA/QC Database includes:

• File number
• Project code 
• Field number
• Station Code
• Sampling Date/Time
• Parameter (TKN, TP, NH4, NOx, Ortho-P, NO2)
• Results

Jurate and I 's main tasks consist of sorting all this information included in an initial huge database and to separate it by sampling method, parameters and winter/summer samples. Once this work done, we made the following graphs:

• Field Duplicate Results comparison
• Field Duplicate Results Difference Frequency Histogram
• Field Duplicate Result Frequency Histogram

These graphs were very helpful to check possible errors in the database, since they allow us to detect the outliers (comparative very big or very small results). These outliers were compared later with the results in the initial database.

Finally, I compressed all the information (Tables and Graphs) about the nutrient concentration measurements of the water samples (TP, NOx, NH4, TKN, NO2, ortho-P). Then I converted this file to a PDF format in order to start the report.

I identified a set of questionable sample pairs, based upon qualitative inspection of graphical representation of the field duplicates (FD) pairs and equipment blanks (EB). Eight cases were identified for field duplicates and one case for equipment blanks. I checked whether this questionable sample pairs were significant or not. Two of the eight  field duplicates pairs were identified as significant and studied in greater detail, in order to investigate which field duplicates results may be wrong and possible error sources. The supporting evidence includes the grab results from the same date, the ISCO and EB results from nearby sampling dates and the 1999 annual average. The report also contains a table that shows the dates on which grab samples were taken, the dates on which field duplicates and equipment blanks were secured, and the dates in which there were conclusive FD and EB problems (by parameter). Finally this report contains an appendix with the individual FD and EB graphs and tables.

In addition to the chemical analyses made to determine the nutrient concentration in the water samples, measurements of the surface water flow rate and volume were also undertaken. There are two types of flow readings: manual and CR10. I had to compare these two readings in order to correct and adjust them. The main way to do this was by graphing the CR10 and manual flow readings.

The electronic database of the manual flow readings was completed with field hand written notes. I had to check these notes to detect the differences with the electronic database. There was information that was missing in the computer files (date and time when a manual reading was made), mistakes in the time when a reading was made (differences between watch time and CR10 Time) and some errors when converting the results from inches to millimeters.

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