The Question

Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:14:09 -0800
From: Eleanor Ely <ellieely@earthlink.net>
Greetings:
I'm wondering if there are any volunteer monitoring programs that have created a relatively simple interactive online map that displays monitoring sites and data, and which did not require a high degree of computer programming expertise to construct. By "displaying data" I mean either directly displaying the data on the map, for example in a pop-up balloon associated with the site, or linking to data that can be accessed by clicking on sites on the map.
The volunteer monitoring interactive maps that I've seen so far have been designed by people with extensive professional training as programmers, cartographers, or Web designers. However, it seems as if there is some technology available -- e.g., Google My Maps (the easiest), or Google Maps API -- that potentially could be used by people without so much expertise. If anyone has such an example, I would love to hear from them.
Thank you!
Ellie
Eleanor Ely
Editor, The Volunteer Monitor Newsletter
50 Benton Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94112
415-334-2284
ellieely@earthlink.net

Responses

Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:30:15 -0600
From: Laura MacFarland <lmacfarland@wisconsinrivers.org>

Ellie,
Project RED (River Alliance of Wisconsin's volunteer invasive species monitoring project)
and many other groups use www.citsci.org that allows volunteers to map their findings.
Their mapping application has had a few kinks but they are working them out.

Laura MacFarland, AIS Project Coordinator
River Alliance of Wisconsin
306 E. Wilson St., Ste. #2W
Madison, WI 53703
Ph: 608-257-2424 ext. 110
Fax: 608-260-9799
www.wisconsinrivers.org

Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:58:04 -0800
From: Erick Burres <eburres@waterboards.ca.gov>
Subject: Re: [volmonitor] displaying data with online maps

Ellie,
Here is a list of some Citizen Monitoring Websites with water quality maps.
They are all unique. Some groups in San Diego have found it easy to use
Ecolayers and I believe CCAMP has been able to use Google Maps. I hope
that this will be useful for you.

Santa Barbara Channel Keeper
http://www.stream-team.org/Ventura/main.html

Heal the Bay
http://www.healthebay.org/streamteam/chem/

San Diego Stream Team
www.sdstreamteam.org/

San Diego Coast Keeper
http://www.sdcoastkeeper.org/content/programs/waterMon/overview.htm

Southern California Marine Institute (Might still be posted.)
http://scmi.us/category/programs/citizen-water-quality-monitoring

Save the Bay
http://savesfbaygallery.org/hotspots09/index.html

CCAMP (Central Coast Ambient Monitoring Program)
http://www.ccamp.org/ca300/3/3.htm

Ecolayers (They have worked with NGO's and Agencies.)
http://www.ecolayers.com/

Sincerely,

Erick Burres
Citizen Monitoring Coordinator
SWRCB-SWAMP-Clean Water Team
Visit the Clean Water Team at:
http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/swamp/cwt_volunteer.shtml

Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:47:55 -0800 (PST)
From: John Mickelson <jmickelct@yahoo.com>
Hi Eleanor,
It's pretty straight forward to do within Google Maps and\or Google Earth.
There are a wide range of tutorials out there to help you; most labor goes into formatting your data... I built a simple service for the stream walk group in our town.
See this link

John Mickelson
Geospatial and Ecological Services
501 Stage Rd.
Monroe, NY 10950-3217
(845) 893-4110
john.mickelson@yahoo.com

Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:11:32 -0500
From: John Murphy <johnmurphy@streamwatch.org>

Ellie,
Have you seen www.streamwatch.org/stream-conditions ?
John

John Murphy
Director, StreamWatch
434-242-1145
P.O. Box 181, Ivy, VA Â 22945
www.streamwatch.org

Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:24:31 -0500
From: "Boward, Dan" <DBOWARD@dnr.state.md.us>
Subject: RE: [volmonitor] displaying data with online maps

Hi Ellie,
We've done this http://www.dnr.state.md.us/streams/mbss/sentinel_map.html with our MBSS sentinel sites. We've found out that our 5000 or so Stream Waders sites might be too much for Google maps.
Hope this is helpful.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Dan
Dan Boward
Maryland Department of Natural Resources
Monitoring and Non-tidal Assessment Division
580 Taylor Ave.; C-2
Annapolis, Maryland 21401
410-260-8605 (voice)
410-260-8620 (fax)
dboward@dnr.state.md.us
http://www.dnr.state.md.us/streams/mbss/index.html

Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:41:58 -0500
From: "Craddock, Timothy D" <Timothy.D.Craddock@wv.gov>
Eleanor,
In my volunteer assessment database (VAD) I use latitudes and longitudes provided by the monitoring group to create a simple topographic map. The map is created by linking to Maptech. Nothing real fancy here... The link below provides an example. You can change the map scale and do a little zooming in and out, but that's about it. Lat-Lon coordinates are displayed if you move your mouse over the map.http://www2.wvdep.org/dwwm/wvsos/vad/publicmap.cfm?&SurveyCode=WVMNAAC-05281998a
The link above is from my VAD public pages, which were created for persons who want to view data only.
Tim Craddock, Program Coordinator
WVDEP's Save Our Streams Program
601 57th Street, SE
Charleston, WV 25304
Office: (304) 926-0499 Ext. 1040
Mobile: (304) 389-7630
E-mail: timothy.d.craddock@wv.gov
Web page: http://www.wvdep.org/dwwm/wvsos

Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:27:54 -0500
From: "Ward, David" <David.Ward@loudoun.gov>
Subject: RE: [volmonitor] displaying data with online maps

Loudoun Watershed Watch provides links to several volunteer stream mapping efforts by their partners at http://www.loudounwatershedwatch.org/subitem5_6.html - This activity continues to be a work in progress. Some are simple imagemap hovers, some are standard framed Google maps, and there's custom Google Maps mapping in preparation http://www.loudounwatershedwatch.org/maps/
- David Ward

Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:11:45 -0500
From: nolnacsj@aol.com

I am sure this has been asked and debated before but our town on Cape Cod is trying to determine what data management options are out there for all our water quality monitoring data and other environmental data that we have. Right now it is all on huge Excel spreadsheets which are hard to use when you want to try and present any information (many parameters, field observations, etc.). We also have land use and other data related to our wastewater planning activities so we need to house all the different data in a way that allows for sharing of information with citizens, town committees, other towns and other volunteer and environmental groups (and regulators). We know about EPA STORET (not very user friendly in my opinion), and the more recent WQX (better), and we think that is probably where we need to go (WQX), but I wondered if anyone out there cares to comment on their own experiences.

Thank You!

Judy Scanlon
Orleans Marine and Freshwater-Water Quality Task Force

Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:05:30 -0800 (PST)
From: John Mickelson <jmickelct@yahoo.com>
Hi Judy,
While I'll guess there will be a fairly large gap between your immediate needs and this programs applications, I do think that the NSF-funded Consortium of Universities for Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI) will have at least a great deal of interesting projects, if not immediately applicable tools.
http://www.cuahsi.org/
One sub-group of the program has been delving into the interoperability issues which have been bottlenecking large-scale efforts to connect and centralize access to the many disparate water quality programs and types that now exist (Fed\State\Local). This Hydrological Information System (HIS) division http://his.cuahsi.org/
has a wide range of developing and capable tools, including HydroExcel: WaterOneFlow Excel Client, which might help you.
http://his.cuahsi.org/hydroexcel.html
Certainly worth our collective look and ideally our encouragement for a single, unified water quality data standard underpinning an integrated national water quality assessment and visualization service.

Cheers,
John

John Mickelson
Geospatial and Ecological Services
501 Stage Rd.
Monroe, NY 10950-3217
(845) 893-4110
john.mickelson@yahoo.com

================================================================================