Volunteer monitoring programs can include a variety of activities depending on their purpose and funding. If the primary purpose of a monitoring program is public education, volunteers may focus on documenting point sources of pollution in a watershed - an activity which does not require very much equipment. Another group's purpose might be to collect scientific water quality data. This may necessitate a different level of funding and commitment.

What can volunteer monitoring programs provide?

• Baseline data - consistent monitoring of the same sites over time.
• Investigative sampling - locate sources of pollution by sampling areas found to be suspect and continuing sampling to pinpoint contamination.
• Shoreline survey work or watershed surveys - document potential and actual, direct and indirect sources of pollution.
• Resource inventory - survey of flora and fauna of the area and surveys of benthic organisms.
• Scientific investigations - test a hypothesis.
• Public education - stimulates awareness that complex ecological systems require long-term observation and study for understanding.
• Establish new management priorities - provides information that may help guide management efforts.
• Understanding of the relationship between ecological conditions and human land-use.

What is NOT provided by a volunteer water quality program?

• Direction that environmental quality is taking - a sequence of only 2 - 3 years of data can be very misleading.
• Immediate detection of change - environments have a response time which varies greatly - for example, perhaps a decade for lakes, a century for soil.
• Cannot tell us whose activities should be controlled - science can give us data to assist in judgements, but it cannot make those judgements for us.

Many different variables can be measured in a water quality monitoring program.

A variable is any defined environmental factor or condition that changes over time and space.

There are complicated relationships between physical, chemical, and biological parameters in estuaries. By monitoring all three types of variables rather than only one, we hope to paint a more complete picture of these poorly understood interactions. Understanding these relationships will facilitate management of our estuarine resources and upland watersheds. This section briefly describes water quality variables that you can measure and why they are of interest.

Physical and Chemical Variables:

Water Temperature

Water Level

Salinity

pH

Dissolved Oxygen (DO)

Turbidity

Stream Flow

Biological Variables and Bioassessment Techniques:

Water Quality

Habitat

Benthic Macroinvertebrates

Intertidal Organisms

Aquatic Vegetation

Chlorophyll/Plankton

Fecal Coliform Bacteria

Protocols are available for all variables in the Estuary-Net Project. A sample of the biological protocols are available at this site.

Biological monitoring is used for detecting the health of aquatic environments and assessing the relative severity of the pollution impacts. Once a problem is detected, testing is usually necessary to identify the cause, its source, and the appropriate mitigation.

Biological monitoring is an effective way to determine water quality problems because:

• Biological communities reflect overall ecological integrity (i.e., chemical, physical, and biological integrity).
• Biological communities change in response to a wide variety of pollutants and to the cumulative impacts of those pollutants.
• Routine monitoring of biological communities can be relatively inexpensive, particularly when compared to the cost of assessing toxic pollutants.
• The status of biological communities is of direct interest to the public as a measure of a pollution-free environment.
• Where criteria for specific impacts do not exist (e.g., nonpoint-source impacts that degrade habitat), negative changes in the biological communities may be the only practical means of evaluation.

Please return to the Estuary-Net Home Page if you wish to request more information about the Estuary-Net Project.