Keeping it Real: Managing Citizen Monitoring Programs for the Collection of Actionable Data Concerning Water Quality and Watershed Management

Citizen science offers communities the chance to “share the economy” when it comes to water quality watershed management. Through citizen science projects, crowdsourcing and strategic partnerships, large useful datasets... [ view full abstract ]

Citizen science offers communities the chance to “share the economy” when it comes to water quality watershed management. Through citizen science projects, crowdsourcing and strategic partnerships, large useful datasets can be created through the efforts of many. Ensuring data collected has value towards understanding real environmental conditions, pollution source identification, will empower informed management decisions and is scientifically objective should be of primary importance for monitoring programs interested in producing actionable data. The Clean Water Team has assisted hundreds of programs to ensure that the data they collect is of known value and relates directly to answering their questions of interest. The Clean Water Team’s approach to “Keeping it Real” relies on question formulation, data needed to answer that question (regulatory and/or environmental), data quality requirements and program costs (including volunteer skill levels) required to obtain the data needed, re-evaluation and adaptive alignment of program support and data, and the consideration of adding value so data may be used beyond the program’s primary question of interest. Our approach supports the formation of monitoring plans, Quality Assurance Project Plans (QAPP), training manuals, health & safety communication, information management & sharing, and project reporting. Data collected by citizen scientists through this approach have been successfully used by communities, scientists and agencies for environmental and regulatory applications to improve and protect water quality and environmental conditions.