New App Empowers Community Water Monitors

Understanding Landscape Is Key to Improving 水的质量
High-Resolution Look at the Landscape Conditions Provides More Insight 

马里兰州安纳波利斯——今天， The Water Data Collaborative (WDC)发布了新的 基于web的应用程序 和相应的 StoryMap to help community scientists better understand the landscape that drains into the body of water they are monitoring. 十大赌博正规老平台 is a founding member of WDC, and the 双鱼座的基础 funded the 十大赌博正规老平台 Conservation Innovation Center’s work on this project.

The new app will help existing monitoring programs by providing a high-resolution look at the landscape conditions, which can be compared to observed water quality trends. For groups or individuals that are looking for opportunities for restoration and conservation, this tool can also be used to target the most at-risk areas.

“It is well established that when a watershed experiences 超过10% impervious land cover, water quality becomes degraded. 在全国范围内, and despite almost 50 years of the Clean Water Act, almost 70% of our waterways remain unassessed. This is where the work of community science monitors come in, but to make the most of their efforts, it is important to plan monitoring activities in a way that will lead to the most useful data for the questions they are trying to answer,” 十大赌博正规老平台 Geospatial Analyst Emily Wiggans. “This tool can help with those planning efforts by ensuring the most at-risk and urbanized watersheds can be identified for monitoring. It can also be used in efforts to identify target catchments for conservation or restoration, 比如, a catchment has a high portion of land with impervious surfaces, such as buildings and roads, landscape restoration efforts may be able to improve water quality.”

Photo courtesy of: Will Parson / Chesapeake Bay Program

“的保护’s Conservation Innovation Center has yet again set an incredibly high bar in making their high resolution land use land cover data accessible to community scientists and decision makers,” 下议院 Executive Director John Dawes. “This data represents the future of what’s possible for environmental decision making. We couldn’t be more fortunate to have a partner like this at the table to help WDC continue to innovate and uplift community monitoring programs across the nation.”

“Sound data underpin important water management policies and regulations,” Dr. Jerad Bales, Executive Director of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI).  “As a member of the WDC, CUAHSI values community water data. Community water monitoring data collected by volunteers have been shown to fill important data gaps in many basins, and these data often are of the same quality as data collected by agencies. The understanding of landscape conditions provided by this tool will assist in planning new community monitoring and will provide enlightened interpretation of existing data.”

The tool is initially intended for use in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, with hopes to expand in the future to other areas where there is additional available high-resolution land cover. It is intended that the tool will be updated as the latest land cover data from 十大赌博正规老平台 is updated in 2021.

While other similar applications exist, this tool helps to demonstrate more precisely the land cover at a finer scale using the newest National Hydrography Dataset (NHD Plus HR Beta). 当数据集是 目前为测试版, it presents the most high-resolution national water dataset to date, at the smallest catchment-scale unit.