Micro CSI - Urban Edition - A Microbial Citizen Science Initiative in Urban Watersheds

Across the Nation, a number of citizen science efforts have been conducted to monitor water quality. Efforts have included monitoring of bacteriological parameters (E. coli, enterococci, and fecal coliforms) and/or physicochemical parameters (temperature, turbidity, pH, conductivity, etc.). Although these efforts are extremely useful to identify a problem area, they can be limiting in scope due to resource availability, human manpower, or even sampling logistics. Likewise, monitoring efforts conducted by county, city, and state governments to identify water quality issues are often limited due to funding and/or lack of available personnel.

The aim of our proposal is to build a program, where the efforts of citizen scientists from a variety of urban locations come together under a program called Urban MicroCSI. Information gathered by citizen scientists on microbial water quality will be collected in a central location and used to adapt a statistical modeling tool already used in recreational beaches (Virtual Beach (VB)) to urban streams. VB will facilitate identification of stream locations prone to impairment due to fecal bacteria. The tool will also be able to identify the environmental conditions that produce such impairments. The effort will include source identification to better inform mitigation practices.