New Practitioner Resource: Supporting Volunteer-Based Monitoring of Human Activities in Watersheds

We are excited to announce the release of “A Guide to Volunteer-Based Monitoring of Human Activities in Watersheds,” a resource developed by the UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science in collaboration with the Resources Legacy Fund’s (RLF) Open Rivers Fund.

This guide emerged from an ongoing project focused on the role that community and citizen science (CCS) can play in dam removal and watershed restoration, and it serves as a companion piece to the CCS manual. We hope it can help with capacity-building in local communities and watersheds for monitoring the impacts of dam removal and watershed restoration while supporting ongoing stewardship and learning.

This guide is meant to help readers develop volunteer-based monitoring projects that generate data about human activities in watersheds and other conservation and land stewardship contexts. Most of the information in this guide serves as an entry point for thinking through project design, and we have included references for digging deeper into particular approaches.

In this guide, we specifically address the role that volunteers can potentially play in such projects. Crafting a role for volunteers in human activities monitoring involves iterating between three related questions that often come up in conversations with partners collaborating on watershed restoration and dam removal.

Key features of the guide include:

• Methods for monitoring human activities in watersheds
• Case studies from successful monitoring initiatives
• Guidance on addressing common challenges in volunteer-based monitoring
• Tools for matching monitoring methods with project needs and volunteer capabilities
• Evaluation frameworks for assessing volunteer engagement

The guide draws on fields such as recreation ecology, tourism studies, and conservation social science, with the intention of making this information accessible to practitioners and community organizations. This guide helps practitioners navigate important considerations around volunteer engagement, data quality, safety, and reciprocity.

You can access and download the full document here and check out the rest of the Center’s Dams Removal work here. We encourage practitioners, conservation organizations, and community groups to explore this resource and adapt its tools to their local contexts.

Lastly, we welcome feedback from folks using this guide in their work. Your experiences will help us continue improving resources for volunteer-based monitoring. Please visit this link to share your thoughts.