River Watch Program

Mission: To help people collect, understand and use information about the health of their rivers and the people who depend on them.

What is River Watch?

Over 550,000 people across America are involved in community-based watershed monitoring and assessment today. They gather and interpret information on the health of their watersheds and their communities. They promote public awareness of watershed values, issues, problems and solutions. They create opportunities for students to learn science and other subjects through hands-on projects, and gather information that helps community leaders identify and solve problems. And they track ecological and human health conditions and trends to assess whether protection and restoration efforts are working.

Community-based monitoring programs are carried out by schools, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and Native American Tribes. River Network's River Watch Program provides guidance and support by helping these groups plan and carry out their programs. We also work closely with national, regional and state service providers – including other nonprofit organizations, government agencies and academic institutions – to assess the needs of monitoring groups and find the best ways to work together to meet them.

Through River Watch, we help our Partners:

understand the natural forces that shape their watersheds and make them unique;
determine how clean and healthy their rivers and streams are;
identify watershed problems and their sources;
take stock of the social, political and economic contexts for their work; and
evaluate the effectiveness of watershed protection and restoration activities.

Tribal Programs

River Watch staff work closely with Native American Tribes, who play a unique role in setting and monitoring clean water standards. Some examples of our work with Tribes include:

Providing watershed monitoring trainings to Taos Pueblo, Santa Ana Pueblo, Picuris Pueblo (of NM) and the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians (ME)
Providing community health survey training to the Taos Pueblo tribal environmental office
Completing health assessments analyzing the connection between river health and human health at Taos Pueblo and or the Abenaki Nation (VT)
Working closely with the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council to shape their strategic plan, strengthen their organization and identify funding sources
Providing training or tribal representatives and others at our Clean Water Act workshops in New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska and elsewhere.

Training

River Watch staff conduct dozens of trainings across the country each year. They range from short workshops to offered at state and regional gatherings to week-long intensive training courses. We work with state and regional nonprofit organizations and state and federal agencies to organize training events. Topics include:

Water Quality Monitoring and Assessment
Biological Health Monitoring and Assessment
Assessment Design
Quality Assurance
From Data to Information
Clean Water Institutes
Introduction to Epidemiology and Toxicology
Conducting Human Health Surveys
Human Health and Water Quality Criteria

For more detailed workshop descriptions, visit our Workshops and Training page.

Consultation and Facilitation

River Watch staff consult with individual groups on all the training topics listed here. Since we are familiar with the special issues that community-based monitoring groups face, we can provide valuable facilitation to groups developing a new program; help create networks of groups and service providers; develop new monitoring and assessment approaches, or help build relationships between community-based groups and agency data users. In order to leverage our work, we do most of our consulting with regional monitoring service-provider groups, which in turn help support the efforts of local groups.

Click HERE for more information on River Network's consulting programs and fees.

Activities and Accomplishments

Current River Watch Projects

Health and Environmental Justice
Listening to Watersheds: Tribal Guidebook, and
Living Waters online

River Watch accomplishments

Trained thousands of people in designing watershed monitoring programs, benthic macroinvertebrate and habitat monitoring, water quality monitoring, and converting raw monitoring data into useable information. Prepared a report or the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs recommending ways to improve the integration of volunteer monitoring into the Commonwealth's Watershed Initiative.
Worked with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to develop a network of volunteer monitoring groups, organizations and agencies that provide services throughout the state.
Produced a monitoring manual for the Hudson River watershed that the New York Department of Environmental Conservation will use as a model in other watersheds. Produced aquatic life and habitat monitoring training protocols and materials for the New England Regional Monitoring Collaborative.

Key Publications

Program Organizing Guide
River Monitoring Study Design Workbook
Testing the Waters: Chemical and Physical Vital Signs of a River
Living Waters: Using Benthic Macroinvertebrates and Habitat to Assess Your River's Health
Listening to Watershed: Tribal Watershed Assessment Guide (in process)
The Volunteer Monitor – a national journal of volunteer water quality monitoring

To order any of these books on monitoring and assessment visit the Marketplace.

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