Data consistency in the Susquehanna watershed

ALLARM has started to have open Zoom calls with Stream Team monitors. That’s one of the positive outcomes of working from home during the pandemic. Stream Team volunteers in all participating counties can connect to each other! Every other month, volunteers can receive monitoring updates and explore how monitoring is going. During March’s call (with 42 monitors in attendance), the open discussion turned to an impromptu data interpretation. Lettice Brown, a monitoring veteran in York County, mentioned that salt runoff resulted in a higher than typical conductivity values.

The minute Lettice put this information out to the group, the Zoom conversation took off!

Everyone talked about their February conductivity values. Turns out, whether a Stream Team volunteer was monitoring in Lackawanna County or Cumberland County, conductivity values were significantly elevated across the watershed. This coincided with a snowstorm right before the monitoring weekend. It led to a great conversation about salt runoff, including Cindy Pizziketi (another York County monitor) sharing articles from Stroud Water Research Center. This dialogue was an exciting example of the many reasons we appreciate our volunteers assessing water quality and sharing the stories found in their data.