Chemical Speciation Network

What It Is

CSN (Chemical Speciation Network) is a long-term national monitoring program for the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Created in 2000 as a response to support implementation of the 1997 PM2.5 National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) as well as the 1999 Regional Haze Rule (regulations for states to establish goals in improving visibility), CSN is a PM2.5 sampling network with sites located principally in densely populated areas. In 2005, the network maintained more than 260 sites, and continues to operate in conjunction with the IMPROVE national network for a wider scope of visible and ultra fine pollution across rural and urban United States.

What We Do

The AQRC manages the data produced from CSN. The data first goes through a data ingest process that is completed by AQRC data management staff whom have advanced training in database programming and database management.  An AQRC data analyst will process the sampling and analytical data. The data analyst will use functions in our custom software package to calculate final results and post them to the CSN database. This same analyst will also review output messages for errors. From there the data analyst will perform Level 1 validation on a set of CSN data. 

The delivery of the resultant data from the CSN is completed by the AQRC data analyst. The analyst will prepare delivery files of the validated CSN data sets using custom tools in the custom software package, datavalCSN. The collected results from the previous steps in the data generation and validation processes are formatted for delivery to DART. After a validation period, revisions are returned to the AQRC. The analyst ingests the file, addresses comments and reformats the dataset into AQS format to be submitted to the EPA's AQS database.