The second battle of mobile bay — Using SPC to control the quality of water monitoring

Estuaries such as Mobile Bay are subject to a variety of conflicting uses which have the potential of degrading the coastal environment. Volunteer groups among others monitor and record such bay characteristics as oxygen saturation level, temperature, and salinity. Once observed and recorded, little if anything is done with the data. This paper investigates the potential of using Statistical process control (SPC) to examine volunteer data sets and to identify change in water quality parameters.