URI Watershed Watch seeks volunteers to monitor ponds, streams, and coasts

URI Cooperative Extension Program collects data on climate change and how it affects our local waters

By Ethan Weiner

URI Watershed Watch, which has collected water quality
data on lakes, ponds, reservoirs, rivers, streams and the marine
environment throughout southern New England, for more
 than 35 years, is seeking volunteers. (URI Photo/Bill McCusker)

URI Watershed Watch, which has collected water quality data on lakes, ponds, reservoirs, rivers, streams and the marine environment throughout southern New England, for more than 35 years, is seeking volunteers. 

A program of URI Cooperative Extension, Watershed Watch volunteers help to assess the impacts of droughts and wet weather, stormwater runoff, bacteria and algal blooms on surface water quality and contribute to better understanding how climate change is affecting our nearby waters. 

While volunteers are needed across the state, sites that are in particular need this year include Roger Williams Park Pond, coordinated by the Providence Stormwater Innovation Center, and the Woonasquatucket River system, coordinated by the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council. Continued data collection helps these organizations, and communities throughout the region, identify problems so they can protect and restore local water resources.

“Becoming a volunteer water quality monitor is a great excuse to get outdoors and do something that helps you to understand local waters while also helping to protect them. It also means becoming part of a community. Our volunteers are integral to the monitoring program and also to the many environmental and community groups that we partner with,” said Elizabeth Herron, director of URI’s Watershed Watch program. 

Since 1988, URI’s Watershed Watch has brought together more than 100 organizational partners and trained thousands of volunteer water monitors. The program maintains long-term partnerships with the state of Rhode Island, 14 municipalities, 23 environmental and sporting organizations, one Native American tribe, 14 lake associations/management districts, and six national organizations. Watershed Watch is also a national leader, connecting and training volunteer program leaders across the nation for more than two decades.

Becoming a volunteer monitor requires no previous experience or scientific knowledge, just a way to access and an interest in monitoring a particular site. Watershed Watch provides the equipment needed to monitor, as well manuals and training. The new volunteer training program includes both a classroom and field session to help new volunteers understand the how and why of monitoring water quality. Training is free, and attendance at a session does not commit participants to becoming a volunteer.

Classroom training sessions will be held Saturday, March 9, from 9 a.m. to noon, and repeated on Wednesday, April 2, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Field training will be held Saturday, April 12 and Saturday, April 26. During the field session, volunteers learn to collect data and familiarize themselves with monitoring methods to help them succeed in the field. Both field training sessions offer a morning and afternoon time slot. Volunteers must only attend one field training session in preparation for the May through October monitoring season. 

For more information or to register for the training sessions, contact Elizabeth Herron at 401-874-4552 or at eherron@uri.edu. Visit the program’s website for detailed information about the program, the list of 2025 monitoring locations, and to complete a volunteer profile.