World Water Monitoring Challenge
Key News ContributorOctober 25, 2017
Citizen Scientist Project & the World Water Monitoring Challenge
Title of Activity: World Water Monitoring Challenge
Date of Activity: September 28, 2013
Participants: Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center, Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, Citizen Scientist Project
Description: The World Water Monitoring Challenge (WWMC) describes the project on it’s web site as “an international education and outreach program that builds public awareness and involvement in protecting water resources around the world by engaging citizens to conduct basic monitoring of their local water bodies”.To date, 41 countries have participated in the program during 2013. The basic monitoring includes collecting water samples, in our case from the ocean off the Key, to obtain values of the water’s pH, oxygen, water temperature and turbidity and measuring air temperature. pH, oxygen and turbidity provide a measure of the health of the ocean at the measurement site.
The Citizen Scientist Project partnered with Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center Inc. to occupy 3 sites along the beach off Key Biscayne on September 28th 2013.The Nature Center occupied the northernmost site, located in Crandon Park, the CSP occupied the middle site on the Key Biscayne Village’s beach and Bill Baggs Park occupied the southernmost site which was located within the Park. Data were collected at each site by Citizen Scientists.
The Key Biscayne group forwarded approximately 30 distinct observations of water temperature, pH and oxygen to the WWMC data center. The Key observations of oxygen and pH were typical of values for this area at all 3 sites (i.e., there was no indication of any abnormalities in ocean properties at the time of sampling). We are now located on the WWMC world map and our values will contribute to a description of the global pH and oxygen distributions. The success of this cooperative monitoring effort should lead to similar joint activities in the future.
