Building Environmental Intelligence: Leading the Future of Water Quality Monitoring

Description

Building Environmental Intelligence--formerly Building and Sustaining Integrated Networks, or BASIN--is a three-part effort by the Chesapeake Bay Program's Scientific, Technical Assessment and Reporting (STAR) Team to discover new, smarter approaches for sustaining and expanding the Bay Program’s vast water quality monitoring networks. Begun as a result of a funding gap, which was addressed in Phase I of STAR’s BEI work, the overall BEI research soon evolved into a search for creative, progressive, long-term strategies for managing the Bay Program monitoring effort; strategies that will be effective at supporting partners’ collaboration toward meeting the goals and outcomes of the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement. This report is the culmination of BEI’s Phase II: Exploration and Discovery. It is a compilation of the innovations and new ideas that STAR experts uncovered in the course of their outreach to groups around the world, as well as wisdom gleaned during topical workshops and internal discussions. It provides STAR’s best and highest recommendations for Bay Program leadership to consider in order to foster a strong and resilient monitoring network that will take the partnership into the next generation of watershed restoration.

This report is divided into three sections. "What We Know" focuses on the existing need for a re-envisioning of how our water quality monitoring network operates, including a call for it to be as adaptive as other management efforts supporting the Watershed Agreement. "What We’ve Learned" provides in-depth information about innovative approaches STAR has uncovered from experts within and beyond the Bay watershed, including knowledge gained from talking to monitoring groups in Ireland, Australia and several across the United States. Finally, "What We Recommend" lays out propositions for a future in which the Bay Program "monitors SMARTer." This vision and the recommendations to get there embrace new knowledge and understanding that can help us to enable the better integration of citizen science into our work; increase collaboration across regions, organizations and programs; create closer ties to local issues and local governments; and, perhaps most importantly, build successful partnerships based on shared priorities and pooled financial and operational resources.