IAN Seminar Series

As the Chesapeake Bay Program begins a multi-year effort to increase data available for tracking Bay restoration progress by incorporating citizen science into the CBP monitoring network, this presentation highlights Virginia’s example of a similar effort on a state level. In 2003, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality developed a quality assurance program that uses a tiered approach to allow the agency to use non-agency data to assess water quality while meeting both agency and volunteer group needs. The presentation also includes an introduction to two successful statewide volunteer monitoring programs in Virginia: the River Trends program of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and the Virginia Save Our Streams program of the Izaak Walton League of America.