Providing Assistance to Volunteer Monitoring Groups

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New

• Development of standardized protocols for volunteers measurement of a variety of physical, chemical, and biological water quality parameters
• Production of manuals and publications and videos on monitoring methods,
• Consultations on study designs for individual watershed monitoring surveys,
• A quality control program for field sampling and laboratory methods
• Workshops to train citizen groups to sample, analyze, interpret data and present findings to diverse audiences.
• Monitoring equipment on loan

Check the schedule for workshops and conferences

• Check the Volunteer Monitoring Directory
• Get to know MassWWP and its Partners

MassWWP has adopted protocols for a number of physical, chemical, and biological water quality parameters. Check that page for sampling and analytical protocols.

• Electronic Discussion Group: On Massachusetts volunteer monitoring topics
• Equipment List: Prices and source of equipment MassWWP recommends to monitor common parameters, and also monitoring equipment on Loan
• Fact sheets: Some information on water ecosystems nutrients, chlorides, and high pH
• Funding: Updated information on sources of funding for monitoring programs
• Government Help in Massachusetts
• Laboratories that perform analyses for volunteer groups, list of MA certified labs, providers of QC samples
• Publications: Related to volunteer monitoring, from MassWWP and other organizations
• Quality Control: Obtain blind samples for dissolved oxygen, pH, and alkalinity. Also check our QAPP page for help on writing your own Quality Assurance Project Plan.
• Self guided questionnaire to find out how to start your own monitoring program
• Study Design Assistance
• Utilities to organize and graph chemical and macroinvertebrate data. The macroinvertebrate utility also includes automatic calculation of statistical summaries of a data set. Each utility is accompanied by a guidance document that will step you through the process of entering data and creating different styles of graphs.
• Videos: Library you can borrow from, and a few videos for sale
• Workshop description and schedule of MassWWP workshops

Special Projects:

• New England Regional Monitoring Collaborative: Coordinates the delivery of training and related services to volunteer watershed monitoring groups in New England. Check for workshop descriptions and schedule.
• Satellite Ground Truthing Project: Volunteers collected lake data for the US Geologic Survey for satellite research 1997-1999
• Swimming Hole Project: MassWWP led a bacteria sampling program on the Connecticut River in 1998

New:

The General QAPP for "inland" volunteer monitoring is now posted on the MassDEP web site

Take the Aquatic Invasives Survey, if you have participated in WeedWatchers programs or other aquatic invasive control programs