Providing Assistance to Volunteer Monitoring Groups

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• 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
• Links: To more resources outside of MassWWP
• 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

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