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Last Update:
17:46:18 Wed 20 Sep 2000

Why Focus on collaboration and comparability?

Each year, government agencies (local, State, Tribal, and Federal), industry, academic researchers, and a wide variety of private organizations in the United States devote enormous amounts of time and several billion dollars to the monitoring, protection, and restoration of water resources and watersheds. This work includes:

monitoring the status and trends in water quality,
identifying and ranking existing and emerging problems,
designing and implementing resource- management programs, and
determining compliance with regulatory programs.

The information gathered through these activities is certainly useful to the A Stream data collectors themselves. However, critical differences in project design, methods, data analysis, and data management have often made it difficult for monitoring information to be shared by other potential data users.

Accurate, cost-effective, and efficient assessment of the nation's water resources-within and among watersheds- requires that monitoring entities plan and work collaboratively and strive for comparability in methods and data management. The design and implementation of assessment and management programs should be a cooperative product of the various monitoring agencies and organizations active in any given watershed.