Substitute Preferred Characteristic Name for Deprecated Names — TADA

This function uses the WQX Characteristic domain table to substitute deprecated (i.e. retired and/or invalid) Characteristic Names with the new name in the TADA.CharacteristicName column. TADA_SubstituteDeprecatedChars is run within TADA_AutoClean, which runs within TADA_DataRetreival and (if autoclean = TRUE) in TADA_BigDataRetrieval. Therefore, deprecated characteristic names are harmonized to the new name automatically upon data retrieval. TADA_SubstituteDeprecatedChars can also be used by itself on a user supplied dataset that is in the WQX/WQP format, if desired. This solution works for both EPA WQX and USGS NWIS provided data.

Usage

TADA_SubstituteDeprecatedChars(.data)

Arguments

.data: TADA dataframe

Value

Input TADA dataframe with substituted characteristic names in TADA.CharacteristicName column. Original columns are unchanged.

Details

Enter ?TADA_GetCharacteristicRef() to review a list of all WQX characteristics, the including deprecated names (Char_Flag). This can be used as a crosswalk between the deprecated names (CharacteristicName) and their new names (Comparable.Name).

Examples

if (FALSE) {
# download nutrient data in MT from 2022 and set autoclean = FALSE
df <- TADA_DataRetrieval(startDate = "2022-01-01", endDate = "2022-12-31", characteristicType = "Nutrient", statecode = "MT", applyautoclean = FALSE)
df2 <- TADA_SubstituteDeprecatedChars(df)
# in this example, "Inorganic nitrogen (nitrate and nitrite)" is a USGS NWIS characteristic that is
# deprecated and "Phosphate-phosphorus***retired***use Total Phosphorus, mixed forms" is a deprecated WQX
# name. Both are are transformed to their new names.
# review characteristic names before and after transformation
unique(df2$CharacteristicName)
unique(df2$TADA.CharacteristicName)

df3 <- TADA_DataRetrieval(startDate = "2022-01-01", endDate = "2022-12-31", characteristicType = "Nutrient", statecode = "WY", applyautoclean = FALSE)
df4 <- TADA_SubstituteDeprecatedChars(df3)
unique(df4$CharacteristicName)
unique(df4$TADA.CharacteristicName)
}