Stream Monitoring Helps Protect Your Local Watershed!

The new Community Water Monitoring Initiative (CWMI) aims to facilitate collaboration among existing stewardship groups to monitor stream health within Comox Valley watersheds. By developing user-friendly field procedures aligned with provincial standards, volunteers and stewardship groups will collect scientifically rigorous baseline data on standard indicators of stream health including temperature, turbidity, pH, conductivity and dissolved oxygen. This dataset will be made publicly available through an open access platform to facilitate information sharing.

Monitoring water quality on a regional scale using a shared methodology will allow us to observe impacts to watersheds caused by climate change, industry, land use change, development and other local stressors over time. After several years of established protocols, it will also allow us to evaluate anomalies and establish an “alert” system to inform local authorities when they occur.

This initiative will be a partnership with the Comox Valley Conservation Partnership, and is currently funded by the Comox Valley Community Foundation.

Beaufort Watershed Stewards and Millard-Piercy Watershed Stewards, who have been doing similar monitoring for many years, have served as a model for other stewardship groups joining the CWMI this year. In the fall of 2024, Morrison Creek Streamkeepers, Perseverance Creek Stream Keepers (Cumberland Community Forest Society), and Project Watershed will embark on long-term monitoring of their respective streams as part of the CWMI.

Monitoring for fall 2024 will take place at each site within each watershed once per week for 5 consecutive weeks within a 30-day period. The exact dates of the monitoring events have yet to be determined but will likely begin in late September. Beyond the fall 2024 monitoring period, the CWMI aims to continue collecting water quality data during key periods every year (e.g., during summer low flow and first fall flush).

Volunteers are needed to monitor water quality this fall. Two initial training sessions will be offered that will introduce volunteers to the program and demonstrate the use of water monitoring equipment in the field. Training sessions will take place at Glen Urquhart Creek and will be offered in the afternoon of September 18 and the evening of September 19.   

Information for post provided by Casey Doucet and Jay Baker-French: