Buffalo Niagara WATERKEEPER Riverwatch Water Quality Monitoring Program

Session: Poster session

Wendy Paterson, Buffalo Niagara WATERKEEPER, [email protected]
Alexander Maccubbin, Retired, [email protected]
Elizabeth Robbe, Buffalo Niagara WATERKEEPER, [email protected]

Abstract

The Niagara River watershed (in New York State) has approximately 3,193 miles of waterways in eleven sub-watersheds. Given the importance of these waterways to our ecology, economy, and communities, management of their water quality is critical. The Buffalo Niagara WATERKEEPER® Riverwatch Program is a collaboration of scientists and community members (Citizen Scientists) who conduct surveillance monitoring of local waterways to help track the health of the waterways. Between 2011 and 2017, Citizen Scientist volunteers collected data on conductivity, dissolved oxygen (DO), pH, temperature, total dissolved solids, and turbidity for sites in waterbodies of the sub-watersheds. Across all sampling years, all 24 waterbodies sampled had individual sites that exceeded the turbidity standard and 17 of 83 sites exceeded the standard 100% of the time. Additionally, 15 of the 24 waterbodies had sites that were outside the standard range for conductivity 50% of the time. In contrast, samples from the sites were rarely outside the standards for pH and DO. The Riverwatch Program shows that quality baseline data can be collected on a large and long-term scale and asks further questions about water quality related to conductivity and turbidity in Western New York.

1. Keyword
citizen science

2. Keyword
watersheds

3. Keyword
water quality