Community-Based Recreational Water Quality Monitoring Toolkit
If you’re looking to safeguard the water bodies that matter to you, this is where to start.
Since 2018, Swim Drink Fish has been working to bring community-based water monitoring to groups across Canada. Here, you can explore the suite of tools we use at our ‘hubs’ across Canada that allow communities to engage in low-cost, easy-to-operate, and reliable water quality monitoring programs. These resources are suitable for groups looking to monitor recreational waters, build capacity for water stewardship in their communities, and foster community at the water’s edge.
What’s the toolkit?
Through years of framework development and trialing with our established hubs, we’ve created a toolkit and framework that can help interested groups monitor their local waters. The toolkit contains resources for starting a monitoring program and selecting a site, tools and resources carry-out field and lab work, and training modules to get your program started.
The toolkit currently focuses on a Standard Operating Procedure for recreational water quality monitoring (e. coli). However, we hope future iterations of this toolkit will expand the number of tools and protocols we’re able to share.
How can the toolkit be used?
The intention of the toolkit is to act as a framework for anyone, anywhere, to adopt our guidelines and standards for starting a low-cost, effective recreational water quality program. The toolkit is flexible. It can be used in the following ways:
As a holistic guide to creating a recreational community-based water monitoring hub. By following the guide from start to finish, you’ll be able to join a standardized approach to recreational water monitoring in your own community.
As a guide to starting a community lead site with a Swim Drink Fish hub. If you want to add a monitoring site to an existing hub’s sites, you can use the documents here to get trained and monitor your local waters.
As a set of standalone documents to help you support a monitoring framework for your own community. Use these documents as a guide and choose tools to help you monitor specific variables, create a water literacy program, or understand how to engage volunteers.
To get trained as a volunteer community scientist. If you’re joining an existing Swim Drink Fish hub in Kingston, Toronto, Vancouver or Edmonton, you’ll be able to use the training section of the toolkit to get prepared for your fieldwork.
The toolkit is publicly available and free for anyone to use. However, If you’re interested in working with Swim Drink Fish for guidance and support in starting a monitoring program, contact gregary@swimdrinkfish.ca to learn how to join the Swim Drink Fish hub network.
Who’s using the toolkit? Explore the Community of Practice
