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Monitoring water quality is a major issue on California's rangeland watersheds, and there is limited published data to guide these efforts. We used stream-flow and water-quality data from experimental rangeland watersheds to demonstrate the temporal variability of water quality at the storm, season and annual time scales. The timing and frequency of water sampling from the storm to the annual time scale play an extremely significant role in water-quality monitoring. Our studies conducted in Northern California suggest that a minimum sampling strategy should include sampling before, during and after storms. Samples must be collected over a period of several years to account for variability among years.