Surface Water Database (SURF)

Back to Surface Water Protection Program

The Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) maintains a Surface Water Database (SURF) containing data from a wide variety of environmental monitoring studies designed to test for the presence or absence of pesticides in California surface waters. As part of DPR's effort to provide public access to pesticide information, this site provides access to data from DPR's Surface Water Database.

General description of the database

Access the data

What's new?

The recent update of SURF database was released in May 2023. This annual update included DPR monitoring studies conducted during 2020 and 2022 as well as the recent versions of pesticide data from CEDEN (California Water Resources Control Board), NWIS (USGS) and WQX (US EPA). All qualified pesticide data from CEDEN, NWIS (California sites), and WQX (California sites) that were available for download between August and November 2022 have been incorporated into SURF.

SURF now contains over 1 million results of water samples and over 196,000 results of sediment samples. The most recent water and sediment sample were taken in May, 2022.

A new table containing detailed information of DPR sampling sites are available.

Two new infographics provide an overview of the data in SURF:

All the studies in SURF, PDF
SURF Infographic for all studies
DPR monitoring studies only, PDF
SURF Infographic for DPR monitoring studies

Submitting Data to DPR's SURF Database

DPR encourages submission of surface water monitoring data from any organization that conducts studies designed to monitor for the presence of pesticides in California surface water. DPR accepts data submissions that fulfill the minimum requirements shown below. Data in electronic format (i.e., spreadsheet, txt, or csv format) require:

  • Name of sampling agency or organization
  • Date that each sample was collected
  • Date of each sample analysis
  • County where samples were taken
  • Detailed sampling location information (including latitude and longitude, with datum specified (NAD83, WGS84, etc.)
  • Name or description of water body sampled
  • Name of the active ingredient analyzed
  • Concentration detected (with unit of measurement)
  • Limit of quantitation (with unit of measurement)
  • Description of analytical QA/QC plan, or statement that no formal plan exists

For content questions, contact:
Xuyang Zhang, Ph.D.
1001 I Street, P.O. Box 4015
Sacramento, CA 95812-4015
Phone: (916) 603-7830
E-mail: Xuyang.Zhang@cdpr.ca.gov