Volunteer Monitoring
MSUEWQ has been involved with volunteer monitoring since 2004. We work collaboratively with watershed groups across the state to help educate citizens on non-point source pollution issues, foster stewardship on water resources, and help develop monitoring programs that can collect credible data to help inform management decisions. Key partners in this work include the Monitoring Section of MDEQ and the Montana Watershed Coordination Council water monitoring resources section, and the Flathead Lake Biological Station - Monitoring Montana Waters Program.
- MWCC Watershed Directory page: find out who is doing monitoring in your watershed!
- Starting a Volunteer Monitoring Program Catalog: this document provides an overview of things to consider before starting a monitoring program.
- Starting a Monitoring Program Guidance Page
- Discharge Monitoring Guidance
- Video Instruction for Data Collection
- MSUEWQ Gear Loan
- Data Sheets and Calibration Logs
- Data Management Guidance
- Data Analysis Guidance
- Uploading Data to WQX - Video Tutorials
- R based data wrangling and analysis
Data Storage Options:
MSUEWQ Data Hub
The MSU Extension Water Quality Data Hub is a web-based data storage tool for surface water data collected by volunteer monitoring groups throughout Montana. It provides viewers with tools for plotting data, viewing site photos, and viewing monitoring sites on maps. The Data Hub is not intended to be a long term storage tool for meta data. It is intended to be used as an accessible way to view, interpret, and share water quality data.
National Water Quality Portal
The National Water Quality Portal is a robust data storage tool that combines water quality data from multiple national water quality databases (NWIS,STORET,STEWARDS). Data in the National Water Quality Portal contains extensive metadata for long term data storage which can be downloaded as spreadsheets. The NWQP does not have tools for plotting or interpreting data.