Citizen Monitoring and Restoration Program
The Team will help establish a Citizen Monitoring and Restoration
Program that would be autonomous from the mosquito management program
and will likely be guided by a Steering Committee. The Program will
initially serve as an outgrowth of some of the monitoring and marsh
program activities associated with the mosquito management program.
The Citizens Monitoring and Restoration Program would include representatives
from local environmental organizations and environmental science
programs at area schools and colleges. The Program would conduct
monitoring activities and would participate actively in marsh restoration
projects that meet the goals established by the Marsh Management
Manual produced by the mosquito management project.
The Citizen Monitoring and Restoration Program may also conduct
water quality monitoring of those aquatic systems that support large
mosquito populations by establishing a local branch of the National
Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring program.
The USEPA Office of Water sets water quality monitoring standards,
has extensive technical and organizational resources and fact sheets
that describe:
- The role and activities of volunteer monitors;
- USEPA's support for volunteer monitoring;
- How to start in volunteer monitoring;
- National Volunteer Monitoring Conference proceedings; and
- Methods Manuals for estuarine, lake, and stream monitoring techniques
and quality assurance guidelines.
As part of the project, the Team may be successful in documenting
a relationship between certain wetland plant species and mosquito
population density. If so, the Citizen Monitoring and Restoration
Program could assist the project Team by measuring the presence
of those plant species. There may also be opportunities for volunteers
to quantify the presence of mosquito fish in different wetland environments,
before and after implementing various OMWM techniques.
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