Extension
provides organizational support, technical guidance on monitoring protocols
and analyses – and
most importantly – connects monitoring groups
to a host of watershed assessment and protection
activities throughout New England. These Extension
volunteer water
quality monitoring programs improve understanding
of local water resources and encourage individual
and
community involvement in water quality protection
and restoration efforts.
Lakes and ponds have often been characterized as "jewels
on the landscape." Some of our lakes and ponds
still sparkle with clarity; others have become clouded
with algae and excessive plant growth due to runoff
from farms and residential developments, failing septic
systems, and the destruction of their wooded watersheds.
A number of Extension volunteer water quality monitoring
programs were developed around lake and stream monitoring
in New England. Several of these programs have become
recognized as leaders in volunteer monitoring, not
only managing their own programs, but also providing
technical and programmatic experience across the country.
All of these programs have numerous partners and approaches
for monitoring from "the bottom up": working
with local groups to plan and implement monitoring
programs that meet their needs. The role of volunteers
has been heightened by efforts to develop "Total
Maximum Daily Loads" (as mandated by the Federal
Clean Water Act) for lakes and ponds, rivers and streams
that are not meeting State standards.
The New
England Regional Monitoring Collaborative (NERMC)
coordinates
the delivery of training and related services to volunteer
watershed monitoring groups in
New England.
The New
Hampshire Lakes Lay Monitoring Program (LLMP) was
introduced in 1978 as a UNH class project. It is a
joint effort of UNH
Cooperative Extension's Water Resources Program and
the UNH
Center for Freshwater Biology .
LLMP has since grown into
an internationally recognized
volunteer monitoring program and has developed a data
base for determining long-term trends in lake water
quality for science and management. This database is
often incorporated into various water quality research projects.
For more information, contact Jeff
Schloss.
Accomplishment: As a result of actions initiated by
LLMP on Lake Chocorua, volunteers documented a water
quality decline due to highway runoff. A multi-agency
taskforce, including Extension, the Natural Resource
Conservation Service (NRCS), and state agencies, collaborated
to design and implement a series of best management
practices to mitigate the road runoff. Post implementation
monitoring has shown an 84 to 92 percent reduction
in phosphorus loads to the lake from highway sources.
The Massachusetts
Water Watch Partnership (MassWWP) ,
under the administration of the Water
Resources Research Center at
the University of Massachusetts at Amherst Environmental
Institute ,
provides training and other technical assistance to
citizen organizations
that conduct water quality monitoring programs on the
lakes, rivers, and estuaries of Massachusetts.
Accomplishment: MassWWP
cooperated with the U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS) and
MA Dept. of Environmental Management
on a satellite
ground truthing project .
Volunteers sampled lakes on days when the LandSat satellite
was overhead. USGS bought the LandSat images and correlated
the image signatures with the lake data for the purpose
of assessing lake health from LandSat images in the
future. Refer to the USGS
report for
more information.
Another project associated with the University
of Massachusetts Extension is
the Connecticut
River Watershed Project which
is developing a network of school-based projects
in the watershed that conduct environmental monitoring,
generate useful data for watershed managers, and share
data among schools to enrich learning.
Begun
in 1988, the University
of Rhode Island Watershed Watch Program (URIWW) ,
with the URI
Cooperative Extension Water Quality Program ,
is a statewide volunteer
monitoring program with over 300 volunteers. The program
focuses on providing current information on the water
quality of surface water resources throughout Rhode
Island. It is a service provider to statewide and local
decision-makers and is the sole source of long-term
lake water quality data for RI. The URIWW
laboratory provides analytical services to the Rhode
Island Department of Environmental Management and
EPA
New England .
It is a springboard for municipal board activities
by volunteers,
linked
with all cooperative extension water quality activities.
The program is intended to encourage communities and
shoreline residents to understand the need to cooperatively
manage and improve the water quality of all the water
bodies within a watershed.
Accomplishment: URIWW
monitoring efforts on Stafford Pond motivated local
residents and farmers to get to
the bottom of water quality problems within the watershed.
As a result, state agencies, NRCS, and municipal agencies
helped improve manure management practices on a nearby
farm and rectified stormwater problems. The efforts
fostered further watershed collaboration with other
Cooperative Extension projects including URI
Home*A*Syst
,
Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO)
program, and
On-site Wastewater Training Center
.
The University
of Vermont (UVM) Watershed Alliance ,
a partnership of UVM
Extension , Lake
Champlain Sea Grant ,
and the Rubenstein
School of the Environment and Natural Resources ,
supports state-wide watershed education and water quality
monitoring of
rivers and streams in Vermont middle schools, secondary
schools, alternative education programs, and youth
groups since 1999. The Watershed Alliance provides
schools with curricula, written materials, equipment
to monitor, and resource assistants, trained undergraduates
who help teachers facilitate monitoring.
Accomplishment: Watershed
Alliance students “citizen
scientists” disseminate their findings to planning
commissions, school boards, watershed groups, parents
and approximately 10,000 Vermonters via television
programming. Read this highlighted
program description
for additional information.
The Watershed
Stewards Program of
the University
of Maine Cooperative Extension Water Quality Program is
training Maine residents to identify sources of pollution
for priority watersheds and work toward eliminating
them. The program provides 20 hours of classroom and
field training related to water quality, in return
for 20 hours of volunteer watershed service. Within
each series of trainings, a NH Dept. of Environmental
Protection staff member describes status and trends,
using volunteer monitoring information. The program
also partners with the nonprofit Maine
Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program .
Lake monitors are often the first ones to sign up for
the Watershed Stewards Programs and Watershed Stewards
may commit their volunteer time to lake monitoring.
Volunteer water quality monitoring will play a key
role in the Northern
New England Lake Education and Action Project (LEAP) ,
a collaborative project between the Universities of
Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont funded in 2003 by
CSREES.
The New England volunteer monitoring programs also
participate and take leading roles in the North
American Lakes
Management Society .
The CSREES New England Water Quality Program sponsored the NALMS 2003 Annual
International Symposium and annually sponsors
the New England Chapter of NALMS (NEC-NALMS )
conference. NERMC conducts trainings of their assessment tools at the annual
NEC NALMS conference.
The National
Facilitation of CSREES Volunteer Monitoring Efforts
Project ,
a cooperative effort between the Universities of Rhode
Island and Wisconsin, built
a comprehensive support system for the 38 identified
Extension volunteer water quality monitoring efforts
across the country. This project researched (via an inquiry to
the Extension volunteer monitoring programs) programs’ beginnings,
training techniques, quality assurance measures, volunteer
support tools, outreach tools, and funding. This information
was synthesized into a Guide
for Growing Programs to
expand and strengthen the capacity of existing programs
and support the development of new programs.