Monitoring & Assessment Projects
Committee Chair: Jeff Reed
In the Upper Yellowstone Watershed Group, we as local landowners try to make rigorous data the backdrop for all of our discussions and decisions. Sometimes it is helpful to set emotions aside, and remind ourselves that...
In God we trust...all else bring data.
Watershed priority-setting and subsequent management strategies require monitoring of snowpack, precipitation, weather, stream flows, and water temperatures (just to name a few) throughout the year to provide water users with information to help plan for and prepare for anticipated water conditions, including too little (drought) and too much (flooding).
The data monitoring and assessment working group is devoted to providing reliable timely data and content. If you are interested in participating, please reach out to the committee spokesperson above via jeff@reedfly.com.
There is a vast ocean of research and monitoring that can inform watershed planning and management. To make it easier for local citizens to access it, we provide information based on the user group:
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Data Nerds: We curate raw information (without assessing or interpreting it) from a host of private and public resources on to a single web page here.
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"Get to the Point" Folks: For those of you who don't have countless hours to sit on the internet or stare at graphs and plots, we are working on a "water budget" infographic that has easy-to-understand design, reliable and timely data that is shareable and viral and tells a story that outlines the problems and how clever people solved them. We hope to complete this by 2021. It is not an easy lift. We need everyone's help to get there. For now, see our water and open spaces budget and our vital signs index.
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"Where's the Beef" People: Some people want to get their hands dirty working on actual community-science projects that benefit wildlife, trout, farmers and ranchers, and our economy, then our working groups are for you. We currently collect and curate our own data via four community-science projects which you can learn more about via the above four buttons.
