How Can Volunteer Lake Monitoring Programs (VLMPs) Participate?

There are several options for volunteer monitoring programs to contribute data as part of the Secchi Dip-In!

VLMPs who do not submit to USEPA’s Water Quality Exchange (WQX) database or the Water Quality Portal (WQP):

Do you have a large data set to submit to the Dip-In? Contact us at secchidipin@nalms.org and we’ll help you add your data.

  • The Secchi Dip-In will continue to accept data at any time, including for previous years, as long as the data have not already been submitted to the Secchi Dip-In event or US EPA WQX or WQP databases. However, we appreciate receiving Secchi Dip-In data by the end of the year in which data were collected to make annual Secchi Dip-In presentations and reports as complete and accurate as possible.

VLMPs who do submit to USEPA’s Water Quality Exchange (WQX):

  • Ask your database manager to add a second project ID to the data when they are submitted to USEPA via the Water Quality Exchange (WQX).
  • In addition to whatever project identifiers you use for your program, use the Storet project ID: “NALMS_SECCHI_DIPIN” for data to be included in the Secchi Dip-in.
  • Caution! —Please, be certain that data submitted by your program to the USEPA WQX database are not also submitted to NALMS via the Secchi Dip-In website, nor via the Lake Observer app.