Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:19:08 -0400
From: "Sullivan, Chris" <Chris.Sullivan@po.state.ct.us>


What is the typical age of your volunteers? That could help with determining a good way to distribute the data. I think it is great that you get the results back to the monitors at all, let alone worry about making it relevant and meaningful to them. A good comparison would be to use the results from a water body that most people are familiar with and that is known to be impaired, then also include data from a familiar water body that is known to have excellent water quality. With this information setting up your range, I think the monitors would be able to get a better picture of the water quality at their sites/locations.

Good luck!

peace
Chris

Chris Sullivan
Project SEARCH
500 Hawthorne Ave
Derby, CT 06418
www.projectsearch.org
203-734-2513
fax 203-922-7833

Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:57:52 -0400
From: ginger north <ginger@delawarenaturesociety.org>
Subject: RE: [volmonitor] Providing data to volunteers

I, too, think your newsletter full of data is quite an achievement, we only send published data out every 5 years! Because of the large time span, data trends and summaries are the focus so they can see the trends and compare them to others in their watershed but we do not compare everyone’s data to each other. Just within a watershed and at their own sites over time. Hopefully this makes it more meaningful to them than tables or graphs of all raw data. I do think that a yearly analysis might be a better time frame but we haven’t managed to get there yet. This is a good way to show long term trends but does make the possibility of over simplification a concern. So there are pluses and minuses to this method as well.

I guess the first question may be to ask them if this is a meaningful way to see their data. If they are happy then no worries.

Ginger North
Stream Watch Coordinator
Delaware Nature Society
302-239-2334x100
ginger@delawarenaturesociety.org
www.delawarenaturesociety.org

Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2007 11:22:11 -0400
From: Kim Cressman <kcressman@capecoral.net>


To answer Chris’s question, our volunteers are mostly retired, so we’re working mainly in the age range of 60+. Ginger, we asked for feedback in our most recent newsletter, and only heard back from one person! She mentioned that she just wants to know what it means – is it good, bad, or neutral? And why are some areas higher in “stuff” than others? I think some of the basics are worthy of a newsletter article and inclusion in training materials – what are we testing, why are we testing it, why do things change in summer, why is my canal different from that other one. Mostly people just want to know if it’s good or bad, which is an oversimplification that I want to avoid. But it would probably be a good idea to at least highlight data that exceeds standards. And I think Chris’s idea of comparing it to water bodies that people are familiar with is a good one.

Thanks to everyone who’s replied so far!

Kim
____________________________

Kim Cressman
Environmental Biologist
Environmental Resources Division
City of Cape Coral
P.O. Box 150027
Cape Coral, FL 33915
239-574-0785 x2942
kcressman@capecoral.net

Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2007 12:09:54 -0400
From: Carolyn Sibner <hvama.carolyn@adelphia.net>

Hi Kim,

We also monitor monthly (but only from spring into fall), and have also struggled for years with how to best present our data. I also feared the oversimplification that comes from averaging, esp. considering how much of a factor weather plays in our bacteria results.

The more data I have (we’ve been monitoring some areas for 6 years now), however, the more comfortable I am that I know which sites are more likely to have a problem than others.

In an effort to look at our data over more than one year at a time, we recently went through our data and compared each result to the state Water Quality standard for each parameter. So, for instance, at each site we calculated how many times the samples from that site met the state standard for safe bacteria levels for primary contact (swimming). We did this year by year, so we could see whether it seemed to be getting better from year to year, or worse, or whatever.

We then set up a scale similar to the grades we received in school, since we figure most people are familiar with that old A – F grading scale. And then we color coded each “grade”, with blue being the best water quality (it met or exceeded its water quality standard at least 95% of the times we sampled), and red meaning it did not meet its standard even 60% of the time.

We are still tweaking it, and trying to figure out what is the best way to display this info. Excel tables are the easiest to manage and update, but they can still be kind of dry and hard to interpret. We set up Word documents that are easier to read and understand, but they are a bit of a pain in the patootie to update (i.e. it takes too much time to format and reformat the lines and spacing each time we add a new set of numbers).

We can now look at a summary sheet for a site and tell right away, by the colors, which parameters are doing well, and which ones are having problems, by individual years and over time.

I gave each volunteer the summary for their site at the end of last year, but think that Chris made a good point that being able to compare their data to a site that they are already familiar with would help them better understand how their data compares to other sites.

If you’d like, I can email a sample site summary to you so you can see what it looks like… and then you can give me your feedback on how to make it even better!

Carolyn Sibner
Water Quality Manager
Housatonic Valley Association
So. Lee, MA

Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2007 12:34:59 -0500
From: KRISTINE F STEPENUCK <kfstepenuck@facstaff.wisc.edu>

Like others have mentioned, you're ahead of the curve by presenting annual reports to your groups. In Wisconsin with volunteer streams data, we also don't do annual reports, but the Citizen Lakes Monitoring Network does. Those are summary reports with some key information about water quality in the lakes and a trophic status index score, as well as other information to help people to understand their results. They're sent to the volunteers about their individual lakes. They're also available online (http://dnr.wi.gov/org/water/fhp/lakes/Selfhelp/Reports/reportsselectcounty.asp).

For streams, our approach hasn't been as consistent, but we've done things similar to what others have suggested. One way I liked, in terms of getting information out to citizens in a usable format for them, was to create brochures with simplified data summaries about a localized area - usually a watershed or several small watersheds - so data could be compared. For macroinvertebrate data results, we coded a map with red, yellow, and green labels for how the water quality scores came out for various sites (red for poor scores, green for good scores). For other parameters we included short descriptions of why the parameter was important to monitor and a summary of scores for that area. We generally report medians, since that tends to be a good representation for smaller data sets (though now, with over 4000 data points, means and medians are often equal to one another).

We did a longer data results report for a 10 year data summary, again including short descriptions of why it's important to monitor what we do, and comparing statewide medians/means, lows, and highs, with the local means/medians, lows and highs, and discussing areas that may be important to do follow up monitoirng.

The brochures and 10 year summary are posted online at: http://watermonitoring.uwex.edu/wav/monitoring/databaseResults.html

With our online database, citizens also have an ongoing opportunity to graph data results over time for a single site or to compare sites. Here's a link to that database if you want to see how we've presented data in graphs and tables (http://www.uwex.edu/ces/erc/watervol/). A weakness to those graphs and tables is that we have no supporting information about what the data mean- people viewing them either need a base knowledge of what's presented.

Kris Stepenuck
Volunteer Stream Monitoring Coordinator
University of Wisconsin Extension and
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
(() phone: (608)264-8948 or 608-265-3887
(+) e-mail: kris.stepenuck@wisconsin.gov

Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2007 14:00:18 -0400
From: Carolyn Sibner <hvama.carolyn@adelphia.net>


Kim and everyone,

The folks at UMass in Amherst have a lot of info on how to display and manage data. Below is a link to their site (I hope it works! – if not, try copying and pasting it into your browser). There’s all kinds of info on their website about monitoring both rivers and lakes!

http://www.umass.edu/tei/mwwp/datamgt.htm

Carolyn

Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 08:20:08 -0400
From: Eric Eckl <eric.eckl@waterwordsthatwork.com>
Subject: RE: [volmonitor] Providing data to volunteers


In the digital age, the data gathered by volunteer monitors should be available in real time, all the time. I’ve been noodling on how to best do that.

I wonder if any of the folks on this list have heard of a online service called Swivel: http://www.swivel.com/

It’s kind of like YouTube, but for data. Monitors could upload data gathered all around the country into Swivel, and make it public, semi-private, or private. Interested parties can access the data from anywhere at any time. They could assemble data gathered by various parties into combinations that meet their particular needs, without altering the original contribution.

The downside seems to be that there is a learning curve to use the site, and it might be a bit much to ask a volunteer to figure out how to use it on top of their valuable time that they donate to spend in the field.

Has anybody tried Swivel, or used an alternative service?

***

Eric Eckl
Water Words That Work
P.O. Box 2182
Falls Church, VA 22042-2182
(703) 822-4265
Cell: (703) 635-4380
eric.eckl@waterwordsthatwork.com

Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 10:53:48 -0400
From: Tony Williams <Williams@savebuzzardsbay.org>


Kim…and others,

You are correct, for water quality and monitoring most people just want to know if it is good or bad….and so the challenge is how do we answer their question with not to much oversimplification, but also at the same time expand on the opportunity to educate them on the complexities of these water bodies and why one may have “higher stuff” then another and is that a good thing or a bad thing.

We use a health index, or 0-100 point grade and color system to try and explain in a simple manner is the water good, fair or poor. I am always explaining why high nutrient levels are not so good and yet high oxygen levels are good…it often confuses people and even volunteers at first………and so the oversimplification process then works to show them “how” the water is doing….but the follow up to explain and educate them is what really matters.

This is our volunteer program

http://www.savebuzzardsbay.org/ourwork/research/baywatchers.htm

and this is our new attempt to show the data results for each site…so the volunteer can “see all their data” …but it is a lot of work when you have lots of data and lots of volunteers.

http://savebuzzardsbay.org/baywatchers/

…and in response to Eric’s – “in the digital age, the data gathered by volunteer monitors should be available in real time, all the time.”

For our volunteer program, we go through all the data with a certain level of quality assurance checks before we make it available….this take a bit of time to do and at least for us our volunteers know this…but we feel confident in presenting the data when we finally do. So for us, the real time, all the time volunteer data to just have it out there isn’t as important as having a quality package of data to present with our interpretation of what is happening. After that then the data is available for all.

Tony Williams
Director of Monitoring Programs
The Coalition for Buzzards Bay
Nashawena Mills - 620 Belleville Avenue
New Bedford, Massachusetts 02745
Tel. 508-999-6363 x.203
Fax. 508-984-7913

Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:37:34 -0400
From: Linda Green <LGreen@uri.edu>

Tony and others,

Thanks for replying with your fine website and also your reply to Eric’s Eckl’s comment “In the digital age, the data gathered by volunteer monitors should be available in real time, all the time.” It takes time, often A LOT of time to make sure that the data being presented has been correctly analyzed, with necessary quality assurance procedures. It is important to remember that most volunteer monitoring programs are not analytical labs with the infrastructure to process samples speedily and not everyone is using the latest electronic gizmos to upload results. It also depends on how many volunteers and locations you have in your program! There is also a vast difference between presenting numerical data and transforming data to results and then ultimately to information that folks can understand and use.

The volunteers in the URI Watershed Watch program know, well we hope they know, that it does take time to make sure everything is correct before it is shown to the world. We post all our results on-line. We do know that folks are keenly interested in bacteria results, so within a week of water sampling we post those results to our website, with a simple coding of red font being over water quality standards and black font below them, which makes a nice at-a-glance visual. (See http://www.uri.edu/ce/wq/ww/data/07Bact_Tribs.pdf as an example) It takes a lot longer for the rest of the data and results to get posted. We link all results to explanatory factsheets, and send customized reports and attend watershed meeting upon request.

Linda Green
URI Watershed Watch Program Director
URI Cooperative Extension Water Quality
College of the Environment and Life Sciences
CIK, 1 Greenhouse Road
Kingston, RI 02881-0804
401-874-2905
www.uri.edu/ce/wq/ww/
www.usawaterquality.org/volunteer