The Waterwatch and EstuaryWatch community monitoring programs are key components to the Victorian approach for monitoring waterway health. These programs are part of the broader monitoring framework and provide credible data to assist in waterway management.
WaterWatch and EstuaryWatch act as trusted conduits of information to waterway frontage landholders. In these programs it has been shown that community involvement in resource monitoring has multiple benefits:
- enhancing community knowledge regarding waterway health and related issues
- increasing the spatial coverage and sampling frequency of formal data collection as the data is generally collected outside the Victorian Water Quality Monitoring Network (VWQMN)
- providing an ‘early warning system’ for impacts as a direct function of frequent surveillance and local knowledge of local waterways.
Source: State of the Environment report 2013. [LINK TO BE UPDATED]
Image: Barwon River, Parks Victoria