Imagine that hundreds of comprehensive aquatic plant surveys were conducted on Minnesota lakes every year, representing hundreds of hours worked and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent. Now imagine that these incredibly valuable data sets were held by not one but rather dozens of different groups throughout the state, deeply embedded within the unique file and reporting systems of each. Then, even if you could find them, imagine no two of these files looked alike, such that it took hours just to combine even two of them into a single unified data set. Then, imagine that more or less these same circumstances existed in Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Ontario, and elsewhere.

It would all seem like a missed opportunity, wouldn’t it? And yet, this is the reality. Or, rather, it was–in February 2023, MAISRC launched Version 1 of PI Charter, an R Shiny app designed to 1) receive submissions of PI survey data sheets (no matter what they look like!) from anyone who may possess them, 2) process them automatically so they can be combined, and 3) allow anyone to explore the processed data to better understand the health and plant composition of our state’s lakes. Already, we have added several million point-level observations into our database, and we’re just getting started!

Come and hear how we plan to chart PI Charter’s next course!