Welcome to the National Center for Water Quality Research (NCWQR)! We are a research arm of the science departments at Heidelberg University. Our mission is to generate knowledge about the dynamics of water and soil resources in order to improve water quality and availability. Explore our monitoring program, research interests, and other activities here!

Our tributary loading program measures the “load,” that is, the amount of pollutants that move downstream past a sampling station on a river or creek each year. The tons of pollutants moving past a sampling station represent both the pollutant load to downstream receiving waters, such as Lake Erie or the Ohio River, and the pollutant export from the watershed upstream from the sampling station. Accurate pollutant loading measurements require information on stream flows (cubic feet per second) and frequent pollutant concentration measurements (milligrams per liter) in the water flowing past the sampling station.

All streamflow measurements used by the Heidelberg Tributary Loading Program (HTLP) are provided by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Heidelberg University’s National Center for Water Quality Research (NCWQR) collects and analyzes approximately 450-500 water samples for pollutants at each monitoring station each year. From that information, it calculates annual pollutant loads from each station and the loads of nutrients, sediments, and pesticides delivered to Lake Erie or the Ohio River. The loads from tributaries largely determine the nutrient (especially phosphorus) concentrations in lakes that cause harmful algal blooms (HABs). As of 2021, the HTLP includes 21 sampling stations in Ohio and southeastern Michigan. Those stations together permit the calculation of the pollutant export (loads) from over 50% of Ohio’s land area.