SIERRA CLUB LONG ISLAND GROUP, LONG ISLAND WATER SENTINELS ARE PROUD OF THEIR VOLUNTEERS!
Important data information: for phosphorus results which are done the second sunday of every month and other data pages, click view water quality data in google documents in DATA
To understand data: http://www.h2ou.com/h2wtrqual.htm
Baywatch report on nitrogen from the Peconic Baykeeper: http://www.peconicbaykeeper.org/siteFiles/News/8C80D9422A9BA2438D3F43F21E147772.pdf
From Citizens Campaign for the Environment, invasive species in the Northeast: http://www.citizenscampaign.org/campaigns/aquatic-invasive-species.asp#estuary
The goal of the Long Island Water Sentinels program is to compile baseline water quality data for both the North and South Shores of Long Island. Long Island Water Sentinels train and equip adult, teacher, and student volunteers to do water testing in the field.* All volunteers work in teams, ensuring reliable and accurate data.
The purpose of our testing is to add baseline data to a spreadsheet that is freely and easily available online here
Long Island Water Sentinels has teamed with Lou Siegel and sSelf to gather baseline data of the local water quality. Water quality data is essential to understanding the problems that face our waterways, (e.g. when the brown tide plagued our bay in the summer of 2008, Lou Siegel was able to graph the data from the sSelf program and look for correlations to the brown tide - though he observed no direct relationship beween tested variables and brown tide).
The testers become stewards of the waterways, available to report spills, fish die offs, and other warning signs. The towns do not have the manpower, the money or the time to do all the testing needed. This is ecosystem based management at its best: the residents collect local information to properly inform local decisions.
More about water quality testing is available in the dropdown menu under Info > Research
* The spreadsheet database, volunteer training, and testing program model are from Lou Siegel, Estuary Learning Facilitator for the New York State Marine Education Association (NYSMEA). Lou is the founder of the sSelf program, conducted in cooperation with the South Shore Estuary Reserve office under a grant from the ERM foundation. The goal of sSelf is to train and equip volunteers to test the waters of the South Shore of Long Island.
