Citizen Scientists Enable StreamWatch to Build a Long-Term Database to Monitor Stream Health of a Central Virginia Watershed

StreamWatch is a nonprofit organization dedicated to monitoring stream health in the Rivanna River watershed of Central Virginia. The Rivanna is a tributary of the James River and within the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. This 768... [ view full abstract ]

StreamWatch is a nonprofit organization dedicated to monitoring stream health in the Rivanna River watershed of Central Virginia. The Rivanna is a tributary of the James River and within the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. This 768 square mile watershed is home to over 165,000 people and is a major source of drinking water for the City of Charlottesville and surrounding counties.

Using a team of dedicated volunteers, StreamWatch has provided the community and local governments with high-quality scientific data and information about stream and watershed conditions for eleven years. In each of the past two years, more than 100 citizen scientists have helped monitor and assess the health of streams at 50 stations covering approximately 400 stream miles. Volunteers and staff sample and identify benthic macro-invertebrates following Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) certified methodology. This requires training of all certified monitors to identify organisms to the family level. StreamWatch is the only volunteer organization to achieve a level of certification that allows data collected to be used by DEQ when identifying “impaired” waters. Volunteers also assist with bacterial monitoring, habitat surveys, data QC, data entry, lab work, training and outreach.

Data and methodology from the latest StreamWatch report will be shown to demonstrate that nearly 70% of the streams assessed fail to meet the Virginia water quality standard for aquatic life. While the data are disappointing, stream health is unchanged despite a population growth of 15% over the past decade. Continued growth is anticipated. Critical factors affecting stream health will be discussed. Several of the streams that are rated just below Virginia’s quality standards are in rural or exurban areas and are capable of recovering without extraordinary efforts. StreamWatch provides a long term, high quality database to the community and its nine formal partners to monitor and restore water quality.