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Volunteer Monitoring

Stream Team

Collage of Stream Team photos

The Susquehanna River is the largest tributary to the Chesapeake Bay, providing 50% of fresh water and draining close to 28,000 mi2 of land. Improving the health of the Susquehanna River watershed is key to Pennsylvania and New York achieving their Bay pollution reduction goals. Stream monitoring is a vital tool in assessing the health of the Susquehanna watershed and determining whether the Bay pollution blueprint is working. It was within the Susquehanna River watershed that Stream Team began in 2018.

ALLARM has developed a standardized protocol for chemical and biological stream monitoring (Stream Team), which will generate data of known quality on key health indicators. Participants monitor water temperature, conductivity, nitrate-nitrogen, pH, stage and water clarity, and conduct biological (macroinvertebrate) and visual assessments of their streams. ALLARM collaborates with the Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association (MSRA), the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association (LSRA), and diverse local partners which has allowed Stream Team to expand since it's inception to ten counties: York, Cumberland, Columbia, Lycoming, Clinton, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Lebanon, Dauphin and Susquehanna. 

  • If you would like to read a fact sheet about the program, go here. You can view the entire Stream Team Manual here
  • If you are interested in joining Stream Team, you can fill out a form to indicate where you would like to monitor.
  • If you are interested in going through the entire study design process to develop a personalized monitoring program for a specific water quality question, please view our Study Design Manual and contact us to learn more.

ALLARM has developed a Stream Team Volunteer Policy as well as volunteer forms, that participants will need to fill out prior to monitoring.

Additional Stream Team Resources: 

2021 Data Packets - discover the stories hidden within the data collected by our Stream Team volunteers! 

Chesapeake Data Explorer -  stores monitor collected data, including that which was collected by Stream Team