MDA Pesticide Water Quality Monitoring StoryMaps

Neal Kittelson, MDA Pesticide and Fertilizer Management Division and Sally Raymond, UMN PSEE Extension Educator

Do you want to learn more about The Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s (MDA) pesticide water quality monitoring program without reading a report? Check out the MDA Pesticide Water Quality Monitoring StoryMaps.

The MDA has a robust monitoring program throughout the state to evaluate the impact of routine pesticide and other agricultural chemical use on water resources. The MDA’s Monitoring and Assessment Unit produces an annual Water Quality Monitoring (WQM) Report that summarizes the main findings; however, the report does not cover all the results captured by the program. While the MDA and cooperators have over 30 years of pesticide water quality monitoring data all publicly available, this data has not been in easily accessible formats until now.

The MDA has developed a collection of StoryMaps to present all the WQM pesticide data in a more accessible and interactive format. Through StoryMaps, the MDA was able to combine interactive maps, tables, and charts with text and pictures, so that users can see important background information, explanations, and instructions alongside the interactive content.

Currently, the MDA’s Pesticide WQM collection includes four stories: Background, Introduction, Distribution, and Results.

1. Background – Pesticides and Water Quality Monitoring: This story introduces why monitoring for pesticides in Minnesota’s waters is important, provides a brief explanation and history of the WQM program, and describes how the MDA and cooperators use WQM data.
2. Introduction - Information on Analytes, Reporting, Definitions, and Data Sources: There is a lot of information in this story, all relevant to understanding the WQM data in general and how the information is presented in the subsequent stories. This story covers what pesticides analytes the MDA monitors, what analytical methods are used to detect them, the limits of those methods, how the MDA handles non-detections, the importance of considering reference values, definitions of terms used in the stories, and where all the data used can be accessed.
3. Distribution - Geographic and Historic Detection Distribution: This story includes a map that shows where in the state the analytes were detected and a graph showing historic detection concentrations compared to the current reference value.
4. Results - Detailed Information on Water Quality Monitoring Results by Region or Site: This final story in the series allows users to interact with a map to see detailed detection results for a specific monitoring site or an area like a county or watershed.

The Pesticide WQM StoryMaps content has been designed as a companion to the WQM report. The MDA plans to update the StoryMaps annually to coincide with the release of the annual WQM report.

All interactive content (maps and graphs) has been formatted to be accessible on mobile devices and can function as a standalone tool that can be bookmarked and opened in the field if the device has internet connectivity.

For questions or more information please contact: ptu.mda@state.mn.us