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Situation: Volunteer water quality monitoring programs engage the public in watershed stewardship. These programs provide data on local water resources, educate communities and encourage individual and community involvement in water quality protection and restoration efforts.
NESCI Response: With a history of often serving as the critical first link that engages the public in watershed stewardship in the Northeast, the USDA/NIFA Northeast States and Caribbean Islands (NESCI) Regional Water Center supported volunteer water quality monitoring as a focus area. The Northeast States Extension hosts well-established volunteer monitoring programs objectively addressing a variety of local concerns, including bacterial contamination of shellfishing beds, lake eutrophication and riverine health.
Effective watershed management requires adequate locally relevant information. Agencies often lack sufficient resources to collect these data. Volunteer monitoring has bridged this gap in the Northeast by providing both short-term and long-term, high quality data. These programs rigorously evaluated and improved field collection, storage and analytical procedures to improve the quality and reliability of data collected by volunteers.
Volunteer monitoring training guides, resources and workshops were shared and adapted amongst programs in the region to facilitate program development, reduce implementation costs and maintain quality assurance and control of data. Nearly 4,000 Northeast volunteers monitored more than 900 rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, reservoirs, wetlands, estuaries, and marine sites.
Armed with data, community buy-in is essential to support activities required for effective watershed management. Heightened awareness and understanding of local conditions fosters water quality protection and restoration, and galvanizes local action. These educated volunteers share their knowledge and even assist decision makers to enhance the use of locally generated data to support effective watershed management strategies.
Volunteer monitoring programs in the region have collaborated with Northeast Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO) programs. Together with NEMO, they developed training and materials to improve the use of watershed assessment data by local decision-makers. With NEMO, watershed groups and volunteer programs were trained to display their water quality data online with Google maps.
Local programs, such as RI’s Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association, created a website to present and share their data online. A regional volunteer monitoring workshop demonstrated tools to improve the accessibility and value of data for public and decision maker use. One result was the Vermont Lakes program debut of an online Lake Score Card to report on the condition of local lakes. With more than 42,000 volunteer hours worth over $8 million of services since 2000 these Northeast programs leveraged more than a $1 million in direct support from state agencies, USGS, US EPA, NEIWPCC, Sea Grant, local communities, foundations and non-profits to expand and enhance monitoring and research activities. Regional expertise resulted in awards of a USDA/NIFA National Water Resource Project with multiple renewals supporting volunteer monitoring nationally and a USDA/NIFA Integrated Project, the Northern New England Lake Education and Action Plan project. Several regional volunteer monitoring summits have identified resource needs to prioritize regional activities. Recent focus has been on developing regional materials to identify and assess harmful algal blooms, invasive species and stream continuity and help address potential climate change impacts.
On the Ground Results: Data generated by trained citizen scientists in Northeast volunteer monitoring programs were used in statewide environmental status reports, for TMDLs and nutrient budgets, to assess best management practices and restoration effectiveness and to develop local resource inventories for planning and other community purposes. These programs improved the understanding of local water resources, encouraged individual and community involvement in water quality protection and restoration efforts, and helped communities make informed decisions that improved and protected water quality.
