Description: This course provides participants with hands-on experience using the Sediment Quality Information System (SEDQUAL). Washington State Department of Ecology is in the process of adding SEDQUAL functionality to their Environmental Information Management System (EIM) under the module name of "EnviroQual". EnviroQual does not replace SEDQUAL as a stand-alone database and EnviroQual will not have all the functionality of SEDQUAL when it is initially released in late 2006 (e.g., the bioassay tool may not be included in the first release of EnviroQual).

Current and prospective SEDQUAL/EnviroQual users are encouraged to attend this training. The material covered applies to both SEDQUAL and the EIM EnviroQual module. SEDQUAL is used by Federal, State and local regulatory organizations, environmental consultants, academic institutions, and other environmental stakeholders to store and evaluate sediment chemistry, sediment toxicity, benthic infaunal, bioaccumulation, and histological data. Participants will have opportunities to import data into SEDQUAL, and test their savvy for error-checking, troubleshooting and data entry QA guidelines. Participants will also use SEDQUAL's analytical tools for running chemical summations, statistical evaluations of toxicity data, and computation of biological indices.

Prerequisites: Some familiarity with SEDQUAL, SMS, and fundamental statistics is helpful, but not required.

Education Level: Introductory/Intermediate

Course Materials: Each participant will receive a copy of the course proceedings and SEDQUAL 5.0 software.