ANNAPOLIS, Md.- The Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative is celebrating its 10th anniversary, highlighting a decade of work tracking the health of the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed.
Since 2015, the group has worked with more than 100 organizations, collecting over 1 million data points from nearly 2,500 monitoring stations across the region.
The effort includes testing water quality and sampling benthic macroinvertebrates or small aquatic creatures that help indicate ecosystem health.
The cooperative is led by the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and supported by four other partner organizations, including the Izaak Walton League of America, Dickinson College’s Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Virginia.
Liz Chudoba, who directs the Water Quality Monitoring Initiative at the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, said the project shows the power of community science.
“The collective impact of our efforts informs decision-making policies and supports communities across the watershed,” she said.
To make the data more accessible, the cooperative launched the online CMC Data Explorer, which now hosts more than 1.1 million data points.
Mary Claire King, Citizen Science Coordinator at Buttonwood Nature Center in Maryland, said the Data Explorer helps connect landowners to what’s happening on their property.
“It provides incredible graphs and visuals that we use when working with the public to educate on the importance of keeping our local waterways clean,” she said.
Officials say the information collected helps shape state and federal water quality goals while giving residents a clearer picture of their local environment.