Unknown: Welcome to the current
North Central Region Water Network x speed networking
webinar series. My name is Anne Nardi, and I'll be the
facilitator for today's session. For those of you who aren't
familiar with with us, the North Central Region Water Network is
a 12 state extension led collaboration that is working to
support water resource professionals and steward water
resources across the north central region and beyond. The
current is now in our 10th year, we are fast approaching our
1
00th edition of the current webinar series. And it is a
speed networking webinar series. So we feature two to three
speakers on a water related topic that give a taste of their
work, to better connect colleagues and better provide
access to water resource programming and outreach across
the region. I'm excited for today's topic, we're going to be
featuring citizen science programs and talking about how
citizen science programs are putting that data to use.
Citizen Science is a key avenue for us
in terms of engaging
citizens, youth or other professionals in water related
topics. And one of the things that we think is really
interesting is highlighting the different ways that citizen
science is being used to better inform our work. Moving forward.
Alright, so a few housekeeping items. Before we dive in. We
will have a q&a session after both presenters speak. So please
submit your questions for the presenters in the q&a panel, you
can find that at the bottom of your screen, it should say
q&a. There is an option in the q&a
panel to upvote other questions that folks asked, so please use
that feature. We will have q&a After both of our presenters
today. And we will try to get to those questions that are the
most popular first. So if someone else has a question, and
you have a very similar one, please upvote that and we'll
make sure to answer those questions. First. If you are
having any technical issues, you can use the chat. We are happy
to help out if you have any other questions
about the North
Central Region Water Network, that's a great avenue or if
you'd like to introduce yourself or share any kind of commentary
on today's talks in terms of citizen science programs in your
states, etc. Please do that via the chat. And you can also I
will put a link in the chat to the North Central water.org.
That is where we will have the webinar recording from today's
session as well as the PowerPoint slides. So you can
find that North Central water.org and I will put that
link in
the chat for you. If you are having any audio issues, you
can switch to phone, you can click next to the Mute icon and
right click and select switch to phone audio in case you're
having any issues hearing today. Alright, so I mentioned today
we're going to be talking about two citizen science programs.
And we have two great speakers lined up for you. Michelle
Margraf is going to be first she's going to be talking she's
with the National Weather Service. And he's going to be
talking about the CoC
oRaHS program. And then we have Alba
Argerich, who is an assistant professor at the University of
Missouri and is going to be talking about the lakes of
Missouri volunteer program. So without further ado, I will
go ahead and introduce Michelle Margraf. She is the observing
program leader at the National Weather Service, and she's
located in Minnesota. She has been working with the National
Weather Service since 1994. And knows a lot about the CoCoRaHS
program, as well as has examples of how that
data has been used
as well as other citizen science or weather observer programs in
Minnesota. So I'm excited for her to talk a little bit about
that program and how that data is being used the National
Weather Service. Alright, I'm gonna stop sharing and hand it
over to you Michelle. Thank you so much. I really
appreciate joining you today to share information about the
CoCoRaHS network. Let me go ahead and start with
the first slide here of the presentation. I'm located in the
Twin Cities of
Minneapolis St. Paul working from the National
Weather Service here at the forecast office. And today I
want to talk about an overview of what cocoa Raz is and the
types of observations that are available. How the National
Weather Service and our partners in Minnesota use CoCoRaHS data.
Cocoa Roz is the Community Collaborative rain, hail and
snow network. It's a nonprofit organization as basically
volunteers across the country. And they use low cost measuring
tools to share precipitation, snow,
and other information
through a very user friendly website. The website itself also
posts all of the observations that CoCoRaHS observers, take,
and provides training to observers on the website as
well. And the data that comes from the network, high quality
data, and it's used by several different organizations,
networks, academia, education, and I'm going to share some
examples today about how those observations are used. First, I
want to share a little bit about the origins of CoCoRaHS.
CoCoR
aHS was started in Colorado, after a devastating
flash flood in 1997. In Fort Collins, the Colorado State
University was studying the storm. And here's a
precipitation map from their study of that event. They went
across the community looking for precipitation reports, the
official climate stations for the National Weather Service are
spaced about 20 miles apart across the US. So when there's
events that happen in a very small area, you may not
completely sample what's occurred with the event. T
hey
went across the city. And they found lots of people that were
taking measurements. Some of them were weather enthusiast, or
gardeners or other organizations that had precipitation data,
which they compiled into this map. And they thought there's
got to be a way that we can set up a network or wait for those
people to share their precipitation measurements
because they're so helpful to so many people. So that's kind of
the origin of CoCoRaHS. Today, cocoa Ross has grown from
Colorado to becom
e nationwide. It has a network of 20,000
observers across the country that are providing this type of
information. In this Minnesota specifically, there's over 1500
active observers and each of those data points on the map
show where the observers are located. It's pretty easy to
call out the metro area of Minneapolis St. Paul there with
the density of reports. But we are so excited to have so many
people out in in more rural areas of the state that are also
reporting data has been available fro
m CoCoRaHS back to
2009 in Minnesota. Some of the observations that
are available from CoCoRaHS What's great about CoCoRaHS is
its low cost equipment that is observers include 24 hour
precipitation, snowfall, and the being used for the routine
observations. To the right is a current snow depth, and most
observers take observations around 7am Each morning, there's
some special reports that CoCoRaHS observers can provide.
Snow cores are especially valuable up here in the northern
part of the reg
ion. For the winter snowpack, the sweetie the
water content. We also have the ability for observers to send in
spotter like reports where they can do when they're having a
heavy rain or flooding, a blizzard, hail any other type of
weather events that are adversely affecting their
community, they can report through CoCoRaHS. And there's
also the condition monitoring report. Those are especially
helpful right now because Minnesota isn't a drought. So
people can provide eyewitness reports as CoCoRa
HS observers
of how the local impacts have been with the dry conditions.
And of course, that also applies when what are the normal
conditions are in play. picture of the CoCoRaHS rain
gage, it's a four inch diameter plastic rain gauge meets
National Weather Service Standards measuring to the 100th
of an inch that's high capacity. And you can also with the snow
measurements, the low cost tools of a snowboard that can mean
from plywood, and a ruler. Here's a specific look at the
rain gauge used b
y CoCoRaHS. It's used by all of the cooker
as observers across the country for consistency, it can hold up
to 11.3 inches of precipitation measures to the 100th of an
inch. And the cost is about $35 for the gauge. Okay, across the nation. Just to
give an example of the density of reports on the left hand side
the national map I picked on December 26. That's what these
maps are from. Because in Minnesota, we had a very unusual
event we had a heavy rain event on Christmas Day, which was
reported t
he following morning by the observers that the 24
hour reports one to two inches of rain. It was a specifically
important to us because we are in a drought so that that rain
was so beneficial. And we were so grateful for the density
reports. An example of organizations that
use CoCoRaHS data across the country. It varies from the
local level, county level state, federal agencies and other
groups use this data for educational purposes as well.
There's some examples on the right of some of the Usi
ng the data for, or education or research. On the
left are some of specific groups that are known to use CoCoRaHS
data. This is definitely not an exhaustive list but just kind of
an example of the wide variety of organizations including the
National Weather Service that use CoCoRaHS data. And I'm going
to provide some specific examples of the use of the data. So for climate even on
precipitation data, because it's taken with instruments that meet
standards climate standards, if observer for cook
ers has over 10
years of records that can be included in the precipitation
climate normals from NCEI. After a CoCoRaHS observer has 100
observations they their data is also archived at NCI with the
national climate records. Obviously, input for drought and
front loop flood related indices such as the US Drought Monitor
uses, the people that provide input from the states will use
the precipitation data, other indices like soil moisture, fire
danger, and even flash flood guidance use that type of
data. FEMA will use precipitation and
snowfall data for weather related disaster declarations
and also the USDA for agricultural programs. Up in
Minnesota, the Springfield outlook is a very highly used
product and the snow course and the snowfall and the
precipitation over the winter from CoCoRaHS observers are
incorporated into that, as well as your round river forecasts.
Of course, that higher density of measurements is is very
applicable to water resource management. Just a quick list of
wher
e you can get CoCoRaHS data in addition to the kolkhoz,
website, and NCI database, it's archived there. Also the
regional climate senators have CoCoRaHS data. And those that
use a made us know has made us data feed almond is also
available in that data feed. This is an example from MRCC,
the Midwest Regional Climate Center of of how CoCoRaHS data
adds that additional detail. On the left hand side, this is the
Chicagoland area. And it shows all the CoCoRaHS reports that
were available on this pa
rticular day, they made a map
with all of the data sources with except for CoCoRaHS on the
top right. And then when you add those CoCoRaHS data in you can
see the density gets very high, much higher, you can see even
the the maximum amounts are showing up there with over six
inches of rain in a small portion of the county. So it
really helps to fine tune the areas that are affected by
precipitation. In Minnesota, specifically,
there are several agencies at the county, local and state
level that
use CoCoRaHS data. There's a list here of some of
the organizations that we partner with. And it's used for
mitigation planning, resource management, day to day
operations and modeling. That's some of the uses that that these
organizations take in that precipitation data. And I'm
going to provide some specific examples from a few of these
organizations. For Minnesota, one, one thing we
get asked a lot of Minnesota was the 49th. State to join
CoCoRaHS. And that was back in 2009. And why were we o
ne of the
last states to join. Minnesota had a pre existing backyard
preset network that started in 1970. It's called MNgage. And it
is managed by the Minnesota State climatology office. And
there's about 1000 MNgage observers across Minnesota and
contributing organizations to this network. You can see
several of the networks there that contribute observations
throughout this state. And of course, it's managed by
the state climate office, we were kind of towards the end of
joining CoCoRaHS becau
se we were trying to figure out how to have both networks in the state
and have them working together. And what a lot of our partners
do and including the National Weather Service's will take
existing networks across the state and combine them to
increase the density of precipitation reports. As an
example, here's a map on the right from the state climate
office and incorporates three of the networks. Of course MNgage
on this map, Co Op, National Weather Service cooperative
weather observers, th
at's the longtime climate stations, it's
those stations are about every 20 miles across the country are
included in here as well as CoCoRaHS station so you can see
the increase in density across the state. This map just
includes observers that have reported every day. This
specific map is from June of 2023. The state climatology office
also uses the precipitation data just like that map, which showed
where all the data points were available to create maps like
this We were obviously in a drough
t
in 2021, when these maps were made, but they were able to be
sub counties specific on areas that were most affected with the
lack of precipitation. So they have a preset map from a week,
and also for the departure from normal. And you can see the
detail in there. The sub county level, we had a very mild winter, not a lot of snow
in Minnesota this year, which had a high impact up here, the
DNR and say climatology office, they kept us up to date with the
snow deaths, because it's a lot of recrea
tion activities that
are done in Minnesota based on snow. So they're trying to keep
those maps up to date and also show the impact of the snow
drought. So that's an example there of where the snow was and
the how deep it was. And then on the right also comparing it to
normal, the snow depth just to show and document how, how low
our snow melts for this winter. Another really interesting
example is from the Twin Cities metro area, Minneapolis, St.
Paul, we have the Metropolitan Mosquito Control D
istrict, and
they use kolkhoz data along with other precipitation data from
partners. They determine when is the best time to drop pellets in
wetlands, and lakes across the southern county metro area,
their area covers about 29,000 square miles. And there's over
3.3 million people that live in the metro area. So their goal is
to treat. Of course, mosquitoes will come out after a
significant rainfall. So they target areas to treat and when
to treat, dropping the pellets in the water. So the larva
cannot develop into mosquitoes. So that's a health benefit for
the Twin Cities to be able to treat. And another example here mini
Hawk Creek Watershed District. They use precipitation data as
well from CoCoRaHS. The map on the right shows their service
area this is actually inside the Twin Cities metropolitan area
and Minneapolis is on the right side of this image. There's a
large lake minute on Lake Minnetonka, and surrounding
wetlands and small ponds and lakes and the drain into this
lake. Th
ere is a dam and right here and a river the mini hog
creek that runs through a very populated area and goes into
downtown Minneapolis and then drains into the Mississippi
River. So that extra density of precipitation reports is helping
many Hawk Creek Watershed District balance the level of
the lake and the level of the stream and also plan ahead for
mitigation efforts. And just a quick few examples
from the National Weather Service. We of course use the
precipitation data from the coop network.
Coker was state
observers and such. And we combined them all to create
precipitation maps across the region each day. We have
significant weather events. This is a an event that we had over
four inches and a large swath of our area. And we were able to
make very detailed precipitation maps showing where the heaviest
rain fell across our region. And then on the left here, it shows
all of the individual reports and you can see how many of them
and during this event came from CoCoRaHS . And just a
quick snowfall
example. You can see up in here, the amount of snowfall reports
that we received from CoCoRaHS observers, and this area's is
somewhat remote. So we were really grateful rural area to
have so many reports and be able to have this type of detail in
the snowfall map. So I just wanted to quickly
mention, as well, there's always a need for additional
precipitation observers. And during the month of March,
CoCoRaHS was actively recruiting new observers. So we just wanted
to share if yo
u have members of your organization, or if you
have like a newsletter or social media, if you wanted to share
about cocoa Roz on there and just let people know that if
they have precipitation measurements that they would be
interesting and interested in sharing, we would love to have
them join the cocoa Roz network. So I've got a link there at the
bottom to CoCoRaHS.org as well with more information. So I just wanted to say thank
you again for allowing me to share information about cocoa
rods an
d I'm sure you can tell that we are cuckoos for CoCoRaHS
in Minnesota. Thanks so much, Michelle. I know CoCoRaHS has a every
marching she said a specific campaign to get new
observers and where they do a state competition and with
Minnesota has been crowned the champ many times. So kudos to
them. And I saw the other other states neighboring states around
the Midwest or are I used to like trying to catch up. Thanks
so much for sharing that information. Thank you All right, I'm excited to
introduc
e our next speaker, Alba Algerich. Alba is a
freshwater ecologist who's really focused on how human
activities are impacting water quality and aquatic ecosystems.
And she is also the program manager for the likes of
Missouri volunteer program. So I'm excited for her to tell us a
little bit about that program as well as about how that data is
being used. Aba, thanks for joining us. Thank you, Let me see if I can share the
screen. Oh. You see, well, perhaps okay. Hi, everybody. Good afternoon.
Tha
nks for being here. Thanks for giving me this opportunity
to talk about the Lake of Missouri volunteer program. This current community science
project that had started more than three years ago. It's
managed by Tony Thorpe, our project manager, and it's in
partnership with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.
And the Missouri Department of Health and Social Services. The project. Basically, the main
objectives are to understand rural water quality in the lakes
of Minnesota, but also to
examine trends how this water
quality is changing over time And above that, we're doing a
lot of education, right, I'm trying to outreach events to
educate the public about water quality issues. LMVP started in 1992, it was
initiated by Dr. Jack Jones, expanded by Daniel Ditch and
currently manged by Tony Thorpe. It was started with a handful of
lakes, several lakes in 1992 32 sampling sites. And you can see
from this club that we have grown quite a bit since then, the last count in 2022, we had
115 sampling sites and 65 lakes. So it's big, it encompasses most
of the lakes, most of the lakes in Missouri. But let me tell
you, first of all, you'll look at all those lakes. So
basically, all these lakes that we have in Missouri them, the
great majority are manmade lakes, right. So they are a
little bit different than natural lakes. Some of them are
tiny, they can be 4 hectors, others are huge, like the one
that you're seeing the picture on the right down, those can be
more than 30,000 mete
rs. And those are lakes that have been
created because of putting dams into rivers. So this is why they
have specific shapes, and how you know the complexity in
sampling. So we can have sites that range between five and 70
meters, ideally what we will do it sample sample and do them in
the small lakes. But of course in this big lakes, the lakes of
the Ozarks, we have to monitor several sites in order to
understand what about again, the extent of sampling
sites. So those are all the sites that we
have been sampling
in the Lakes of Missouri volunteer program. On the upper
part, you can see on the right side, you can see a map of the
ecological regions of Missouri. So, we're collecting pretty much
a good sample of the ecological regions in Missouri. Most of the
lakes that were something are collected in the plains. And
this has to do with availability of volunteers density of
population, but also the physiology of the system. Why
these areas were more flat areas were more of the cultural
land
is and where we have a lot of reservoirs. So what do we what do we do we
collect water, we asking the volunteers to collect water
temperature data from the lake, not only the surface water of
the lake, but also we're trying to understand how the
temperature is distributed along the depths of the water. So they
they collect what are the flaps, we also measure water clarity.
So we want to understand if our reservoir, it's clear or not
high or it's very dirty. And then we also collect suspende
d
sediments and part of you so with this piece of information,
were able to understand what are the causes of the lack of
clarity or the extend of clarity. We also monitor for nitrogen and
phosphorus and these two are particularly important because
they are the lead cause of pollution for euthrophiciation,
meaning that we have access to nutrients that may have
extensive algae. So we have recently incorporated the
analysis of different forms of nitrogen in addition to phosphorus. And
finally, ano
ther new, relatively new parameter that we're
monitoring for is algea toxic. So you probably have
heard that we are having huge issues with harmful algal
toxins. Those algea blooms that can create toxicity in the
reservoirs. So we incorporated this parameter to 2016. We have a strong outreach
component, we maintain a webpage where you can find all the
information, about the Lakes of Missouri
volunteer program about the protocols that we use, how the
data is used. And then we also publish a newsl
etter three times
per year, we have social media presence, we have public talks
with homeowners associations, lakeowners associations,
citizens and neighborhoods, and also participate in our
youth outreach. So this means going to the library to give a
talk with people about what is the lakes of missouri volunteer
program or what it means to have a lake with low water quality.
It could mean also going to schools or just particiapting in
community events, all of that it's through understand that w
e
have and I encourage you to visit the
webpage to find more information. Through this process, we enroll volunteers, right. The
condition here is that we're asking them to commit to sample
a site, their favorite spot, you know,
that usually has a huge outdoors, outdoors, traditions, so people spend a
lot of time on the lakes and fishing or just staying there.
So we target these these communities that they already
have an interest in a specifically lake and ask them
to just commit to sample this
lake several times throughout
the summers. More or less between April and September. They usual already have
equipment, like a boat, and obviously equipment to go there.
But then we will provide all the supplies needed for collecting
the samples. And they will have to collect
information about the conditions of the day right way conditional
sunny, or not sunny these type of things. And then also collect
water samples that then we will send, theysend to our lab and we
will analyze our commitment
s, basically it's
providing a personalized training. So part of the success
of this program is that the data that we are generating is high
quality. And this involves that we need to train all these are
still on all these volunteers to make sure that the data is
replicable, and it's comparable between all of them. Right. So
our team spends a lot of time training new volunteers for just
weight training volunteers that have been sampling for a long
time, we have those checks, like making sure that
everything,
it's according to standards, then we will sell also all the
supplies needed. And another key element is the follow up. So for
the success of this program, after they have done all the
sampling, they have dedicated all these efforts, on these
lakes, we come back to them with the results of those analysis,
not only about the data on the current conditions of lake, but
also putting it in perspective of how it looks across time
trends across years. And how they change. How do they relat
e
to other lakes around them. So this, I think that this this
is key, right, this follow-up and this has led to have some
volunteer something for 18 years straight. So which is a huge
commitment, right. So let me tell you a little bit
about the workflow. Basically, right now, we are getting ready
to send part of it has already been packed, ready to send all
the supplies to the volunteers. So here we have Tony preparing
sampling supplies at his house during the 2020 shutdown, all these equipment
and supplies
will arrive to the volunteers. in two weeks, something like
that, and then they will start sampling in late April, they will go to the field have
like three weeks. Usually it's a commitment during the sampling
one hour to two hours depending on how far it is from their
homes. They will sample they will
collect the data, they have a data sheet they have to fill.
And they will store all these water samples. And then our
staff will go and pick them from them and bring them back to the
lab where we do all the lab analysis and data. this process ends right now. So
we're almost ready to release the 2023 report. on water quality for the lakes
of Missouri. basically this is a printed
document that existed to all the volunteers and everybody And he was also made available
on our webpage so how is this data being used
in, the main data and usage for these data it's to protect, to protect and manage the lakes
of MIssouri. Basically, this it has been used
by mdnr and the Department of
Natural Resources through EPA to
establish some water quality standards. Theose water quality standards
are made possible or they are meant to be able to assess the
water quality of the status of the water bodies across the US
right. So and they are different depending on the uses of the
reservoir because some reserviors are for drinking use
others and more for recreational purposes. So all of these
different users have different quality standards that they have
to meet, In Missouri we have the
numerical true criteria for Missouri lakes. So this
volunteer program was instrumental in providing data
to come up with this numeric criteria. And those are
basically criteria that respond to the Clean Water Act. So to
have some type of tool to assess water quality, and then if lakes
don't meet those standards, then they are they are for so they are
encouraged to create a plan to meet those standards do so to
make a plan to make the water quality better. For example, so here our
nutrient criti
era for chlorophyll. And this has to do
with those algal blooms that I was mentioning before. So
euthrophication, access of nutrients, and phosphorus in, in
streams, rivers and reservoirs is one of the leading causes of
pollution. What happens when we have this
type of pollution, we have a lot of algal blooms basically. So we establish those, those
nutrient criteria were established to make sure that as
a not as a problem, it's not a problem that we have 30
micrograms per liter of chlorophyll. T
he problem is that
are the conditions that are leading to that, right. So we
want to make sure that everything meets standard
conditions, and we have different standards, depending
on the area, right, because the physiology, the physiology of
the system, it's very different. So you will see that we have
different different standards sequence of different equations. In addition of those two
criteria, in addition of being used to assess the water
quality, and to force or to create this plan for im
proving
water quality, if lakes do not meet those criteria, they are
also used as a screening tool. So if we see some lakes that
they are okay, they are within the nutrient criteria, but they
are in some of these dangerous conditions like phosorphorus is
a little bit high. And in addition of that, we have low
oxgyen for instance, then we monitor those lakes more
closely, right, and mdnr is able to look for examining them more closely and
making sure that the water quality doesn't degrade. The d
ata integration for
protecting and managing lakes has also been used science. So
we publish all these data sets are publicly available through
the environmental data initiative portal. Those data sets come with
metadata, explaining where all these numbers are coming from
how we have gotten to those numbers, and then available for
scientists to use. And you know, when we are in the era of trying
to understand global patterns, and scientists rely on these
pieces of information from different proje
cts, to make
sense globally. So the missouri lakes volunteer data has been has been used in several
publications here is an example of understanding how the
temperature of lakes are changing because of global
warming of that it's possible because
the data it's really good quality, right? So we have been
checking, we have systems in place to check that the dataq of
the volunteers are collecting it a part of what scientists will
be connected. We have also another example
it's this type of data has
been useful to understand
notification pilots in Missouri and trying to see how the euthrophication problems
changing across the state and across time. Again, euthrophication problem,
it's mostly important to understand what happens
downstream or even in the same reservoir in terms of algal
booms. And related to that Have those algal blooms right.
So you might be aware that we have toxic algal blooms are
becoming more and more common across the US, and not only the
US but globally. So it respon
ded to that our lab
started collecting microsystin and Cylindrospermopsin in 2015
microsystin and 2017 Cylindrospermopsin. Our sampling
is not targeted, so it's not going to target algal blooms
that are happening at regular times. But just to understand a
baseline conditions of how algal blooms are becoming more more,
we're going or not, saw our volunteers that were
onboard adding another parameters into
their sampling scheme. Basically, they have now an
extra sampling device that collects water
from the first 50
centimeters of the lake to collect this data to then
send to the lab to measure for microsystin and
Cylindrospermopsin. Those two toxins are highly toxic for
humans, and for animals. And we have there are regulations in
place to try it. But but our advisory is against swimming in
the lake or drinking water from the lake. So we have learned some things
because of that we have learned that both both toxins and present in only
lakes quite often. So not not dangerous levels of wor
k. But
they are kind of one of the effects of the other.
So they are both present. But one shows up more in high
traffic lakes, that is microsystin. The other one, it's
you have to look for it mostly normal in lower traffic lakes,
which gives us some ideas of how can we manage, right, and how
can we target future sampling if we were to look for more
specific information about those toxins? Okay, so summarizing, the data
that has been collected by the lakes of missouri volunteer
program, it's mai
nly used to manage and protect lakes through
the missouri department of natural resources ultimately,
Environmental Protection Agency, most of these data has been used
for creating tools to manage like total maximum daily loads,
to manage watersheds and to make sure that water quality is met The program is successful. And
it's successful because of the amount of training and the
commitment of our volunteers that are awesome. higher retention rates and huge
data quality And again, thanks to the c
ollaboration,
right of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, and
Minnesota environmental, health and social services. So with that, I will stop sharing. Wonderful, thank you so much,
Alba. I appreciate that. Right. Looks like we have some great
questions coming in. As a reminder, we will spend the
remainder of this session going over questions, so feel free to
list them in the q&a for our speakers here. And with that, we
will jump right in. What type of training and
instruction Do you pr
ovide data collectors to ensure consistency
in reporting and quality of observations this person is
specifically curious about if you have a crap call insurance plan to administer the quality across
measurements. I believe this was asked during Michelle's talk
about cocoa Roz, but it could also be applicable to you Alba. Oh, yeah, no, that's a great
question. In regard to cocoa Ross on the CoCoRaHS website,
when an observer signs up, they receive an email from both
CoCoRaHS headquarters and thei
r regional coordinator. And in the email, there are
links to the website that were their training slideshows, and
also videos of how to take the specific measurements and also
on where to site the rain gauge, where's the best place to put
the equipment on the property and it also has the contact
information for the regional coordinator. So if they have any
questions, they can talk to that person specifically and and get
those questions answered too. And also the training talks
about how and when
to report the observations. I know we have
regarding the quality assurance quality control, there's
automated quality control and all the observations that come
into CoCoRaHS. And if something is an outlier, it won't be
transmitted either to the maps or out to the partners. And there's also manual QC on
top of that. So occasionally CoCoRaHS headquarters will send
me an email if they catch something manually. They, they have a question about
the data so that I can reach out to that observer and
clarify the
values. So it's a pretty good system for training the
observers, and then also quality controlling the data. Yeah, interesting. Thanks.
That's good to know about that manual and automatic there. How
about you, all the books are also curious when it relates to
the lakes of Missouri program about, you know, quality control
for that collection, and have lost the storage of the water
samples, something that isn't necessarily applicable to Cooper
Ross. Right. So the flight control, basica
lly, again, no
training, right with the world to record this training, and we
have our staff visiting with them spending the morning with
them collecting the samples. Throughout the years, what we do
is once they have been trained, we visit with them, and we do
split sampling. So we collect samples alongside with them, and
then we compare the results. So they have they received this
card, say yeah, you could improve here, maybe you need to
do a little bit better there. Or you're doing some the a
bout the political drop the
needle, we have all the standards set up in the quality
control of the analysis, the filtering part, it's the one
that for the chlorophyll, for instance, or TSS suspended
sediment, it's easy to then find if something went wrong, because
the filters work well, right. So we have trained people in our
lab that are able to be seen. And for the four freezer mishaps
that has happened in the past. Well, people it's very honest
about when these things happen. So people usuall
y collect the
samples for the ones that are new that they use, they just
store them in the freezer. If something happens with this
freezer, then you can have problems with the the samples.
So people it's very ominous they track when this happens. But in
addition to that we're able to see quite easily, we were able
to store the samples in a specific way. If they get
thawed, you will see that the water has moved. So then you are
able to say well, there is something going on there, but
it's not spe
cifically. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's how Paul,
someone else was curious if you've ever had a discard the
data, because you success suspect it was not recorded
correctly. Unfortunately, it happens rarely. But yeah, it can
happen. Right? Sure. All right. For both speakers,
this question is from Aaron, he's curious, have you found or
considered any need to consider bias in the data sets due to
volunteers that do not sample during severe harsh or dangerous
conditions? If you saying EG, you know,
perhaps during severe
horrible algal blooms for you, Alba, or you know, Michelle, it
could also be for you in terms of, you know, if there was a
really extreme storm event, and it's hard to get out to measure
the snow or, you know, maybe a prolonged snow rain event, where
maybe they're not going out to measure see what the rain gauge
says, if at normal, you know, 7am time that they often do. Yeah, I can speak to the the
question of, you know, if we have a significant event, I guess the density o
f our maps
depends on as many people reporting as possible. And
CoCoRaHS is a, of course, a volunteer network. So not
everyone is able to report every day. So we cannot just take the
observations that come in quality, control them and use
them in the density that they're available. But I can see, you
know, a map would be much more complete. If we had a lot more
reports, as an example, some of the networks in Minnesota don't
report year round, like some of them engage observers just
report during
the rainy season. So our maps in the winter would
have less data points in general. So we may not be able
to pick up as many fine tune details with precipitation over
over the winter season. So that's kind of one of the
reasons that we try to recruit as much as we can to get as
dense of a network as possible. Because you can also pick out
observations that maybe need to be set to missing for quality
control, the more data that you have those stick out more so
yeah, I guess it for us, it probabl
y has more to do with
density. And for that question, right. Yeah. How about anything
else? Well, for ASICs we only have data for the summer. So
that's about more, right? Because we know our homes are
happening in the winter, though. So that's one of the columns. Also we rely on where the
volunteers are even when they are where they are willing to go
to sample right. So, we may have some data gaps because like
that, because we are not able to reach clean off people. So yeah, when using this data
,
data, we take these into account right and we complement these mdnr especially complements this
data with other data sets that are available that more target Gotcha. Yeah, that makes a lot
of sense. Um, let's see this question is for Alba, how do you
set up the program that your collected data is accepted and
considered by local authorities? How did you get qualified for
the in house laboratory analysis? Again, what we do, it's a lot of
so we submit a clock, comparative of even when we come up
with standards
and protocols together, so we'll receive it back into it's an
open conversation. And then we have also those companies. So we
submit some of the samples to external agencies, that they are
able to control that wherever you live. And I think that's part of being
accountable. That works in the world. Making sure that it's reliable
on that. And that way, in terms of multiple sources, folks here are curious about
your equipment that you use in terms of, you know, making sure
that it'
s cost effective. But you know, are you using, you
know, equipment like test strips or other folks are curious about
like your sampling protocol on if that's something you might be
willing to share with other folks who are looking at doing
similar programs? Absolutely. It's all in our webpage. So we
are welcomed to go there and has access to it. And if they have any questions,
please reach out to us. The equipment that we use the
volunteers use, it's very simple, it just wonder what else
I've ha
d been there, the specific type of
water bottles that can be useful to store water samples, and then
some pumping equipment, that it's not extremely expensive.
And right now, they have also those temperature sensors that
they can get into the water. So the equipment itself, it's it's
not extremely expensive. I will say that. At most $100 per volunteer or
per per site, it's an initial investment that we are able to
support. So that's easy. We don't use test strips. So that's
that's part of the wa
ter quality data that we were able to
provide us because we analyze all the samples in the lab,
using extensively. Yeah, absolutely. Making sure
that it's reliable and testing that. Nathan is curious about
for the larger lakes. How do you decide where to collect that
data? Is that where mostly like the volunteers are willing to
survey? Or are you trying to cover a specific range of like
characteristics? Where Yeah, it's a new set of editing, we
need the people that it's available there. But also
we're
trying to cover each of the arms or where the places before the mixing. So we're able
to capture, you saw the interim cape, were follows you have
those legs, right? So we try to capture what's happening at the
end of each of these arms, basically, at the smaller lakes, the dam,
usually it's the place that will integrate what's happening
throughout all the lake, because there is a little bit of water
moving there. But yeah, again, we're limited
to them with the volunteers, right. Nobody's
there to some
but we can go yeah, maybe a little bit more difficult. Yeah. This question just came in from
Tony, how long does cooker rot monitoring take each day, and
did that volunteers report daily or keep a log and report after a
period of time they're logging on every morning at you know,
they're instructed to log on every morning and report my
friend Michelle? Yeah, one thing about CoCoRaHS
is that it's it's very flexible. Of course, we love someone to
report every single day if, if if the
y're able. But if they can
only report let's say during the summer, or if if they can, they are only
able to report when they have significant events, they can
report in any frequency that is, it works for them. We're just
simply grateful for the observations. For those that do
report every day, we do have a significant number that do and
that's huge help for Climate and Water year summaries. And having
that complete data set is just wonderful. So we are grateful to
those to those that do that.
In the summer, or in the rain
season. The measurement just takes a few minutes, just going
out to the rain gauge and sampling, picking the sample
there to figure out how much precipitation fell. And then
going inside, either you can import on an app or on the
cookers website, your measurements. So I would say it
takes about five minutes each day for the summer. In the
winter, when you have the snowfall and snow depth report
as well. I would I would say about 10 minutes, maybe a little
bit longer
if you're doing a snowfall core or I'm sorry, a
snow course we that would add another five or 10 minutes to
that. So the commitment of the observers over the winter that
report every day it would be about 10 minutes, maybe a little
bit longer for and the longer part is just taking the snow
that's in the rain gauge and melting it down to the liquid
form. So you can pour it into the rain gauge. So that's kind
of the additional time that's taken and going around and just
getting your snow depth th
at's it Another extra step. So about
double the time in the winter season. Yeah, great. I definitely I bet
that's something you do every day in the winter only when you
have new snow. Yeah, I mean, ideally, every
day, I'm taking those three measurements. There's a lot of
days, of course, where there's no new snow or precipitation. So
you may just be taking a snow depth measurement. But those
that report everyday would go out and check the equipment each
morning. Yeah, great. Thanks for unless yo
u have a winter, like
maybe some of us have had this year where we don't have any
snow on the ground for some of it right? It's been shorter. But
yes, that's super helpful. I know with COPPA. Roz, it's that
initial getting that official rain gauge off. But then after
that, it's super easy in terms of making sure that you're there
reporting, and there is no snow on the ground. Okay, it looks
like we have one more question here. Great talk Michelle, and
Alba, perhaps the goal of these programs, bu
t other efforts to
publish the findings from some of the data sets is peer
reviewed publications. And what are some of the challenges that
you faced? I know Alba, in your talk, you talked about some of
the publications? Michelle, I'm not sure if you did as much
anything you'd like to add when it comes to that? Well, I know the the quick rise
data is available from the National Archives. So I'm sure
that there are people that have incorporated into research. And
our office locally, we do use it f
or comparing iterate our
estimates. And we've used that for some of our local research,
having those precipitation reports and what the radar is
estimating to kind of calibrate the radar. So that's that's
something that we've used in addition to storm summaries. So
when people are doing looking back at a particular
weather event, they will sample the CoCoRaHS network as part of
their study for that event. You aren't getting we cannot hear you on. Thank you. So thank you for that. I
appreciate it
looks like we have one more question that came in
do you have tighter margins for error with a quality assurance
your data or to greater to account for the greater
uncertainty in the volunteer precision? Can I speak to that? No, not
well, it will be we get down to the same standards to our data
collected by lack of synonyms. All right, I was ready to hear
yourself. So again, though, we will treat
these as screening, right? So if you see something that it's
suspicious, so you're gonna work well,
we want you to build this
data into the final data. So yeah, you're using the
reliability there in order to make sure that you're you're
testing with your own lab sources. Alright, great. Well,
thank you both so much. I appreciate you taking the time
to be here today. Looks like that's all that presentation.
The questions we have time for at the moment, I am putting the
email of Michelle and Alba up there. Should you have any
questions that you didn't get answered today that you'd like
to follo
w up with our if you're interested in following up and
getting involved with either one of their programs, as you can
see that it's very useful in terms of engagement and
education within the citizen population, but also in terms of
using that data and using that data in our decision making
moving forward. We just as a reminder, this
webinar was recorded and it will be posted to our webinar archive
and you can visit our archive for all let's see 97 webinars
that we've had over the last 10 years
or so it's found at North
Central water.org. And I hope you can join us next month.
We'll be talking on April 10. And the topic slotted for
discussion is phosphorus management. So I hope you all
can join us then. Thank you again, Michelle and Alba for
your time today. Thank you
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