Water Data Collaborative
The Water Data Collaborative provides a place for all monitoring participants to communicate, collaborate, and learn from each other.
The Collaborative’s mission is to grow and maintain an inclusive community of trained and qualified community water scientists who employ best available practices and technologies to provide data that enable the protection and restoration of our nation’s waterways.
Despite more than 50 years of publicly funded water monitoring through the Clean Water Act, almost 70% of rivers and streams remain unassessed or monitored by the government. In their absence, thousands of local watershed organizations and volunteers across the country fill critical roles to track the health of our waterways.
Why we’re here
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Amplify community science
Community scientists across the nation fight every day to preserve the health and longevity of our waterways. Unfortunately, monitoring efforts are often fractured which leads to isolated or poorly communicated water data. The Water Data Collaborative works to assemble these separate programs and provide resources that increase the total collective impact of their data.
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Foster collaboration
A collaborative is built out of a need for mutual benefit, and that’s what the WDC offers. Community water monitoring efforts vary so much in scale and quality that the data produced is often under utilized, if at all. Through the WDC’s Mainstem Network members and organizations can learn from experienced regional Champions, collaborate with other groups in their area, or build their knowledge base to better improve their own monitoring programs.
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Protect our national waterways
Community-based water quality programs fill data gaps frequently left by local, state, and federal monitoring efforts. These efforts are essential in holding polluters accountable and ensuring robust baseline readings for national waterways. Without these programs our shared natural resources are in peril.
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Improve monitoring standards
Without consistent water quality standards collected data loses its power as programs can’t share data and organizations become data silos. Through trainings, a unified monitoring framework, and collaboration across all sectors the WDC aims to elevate all monitoring programs to the same level, increasing the collective impact of monitoring data through education and resource sharing.
WDC Core Values
The Water Data Collaborative aims to bring community water science under one umbrella of understanding and implementation. In order to do this we at the Collaborative follow a core set of principles and values that serve as the foundation for all we do and seek to build up all community scientists.
“The Water Data Collaborative is an essential network for raising the game of community science for watershed protection, bringing people and technology together to create new insight and make a huge impact. As the Internet of Water hub for community science, the WDC is a force for corralling the enormous and invaluable data resources of this intrepid water monitoring community.”
— Peter Colohan, Director of the Internet of Water
WDC News
Keep up-to-date with current WDC news and events put on by WDC and our partners.
