Protecting human health by advising the public of hazardous conditions

Photo of a beach closure sign.

Monitoring can be used to advise the citizens of a community about hazardous conditions concerning use of specific waters. Baseline characterization can be used to quantify water quality, determine if water quality standards were exceeded, and/or describe ecological condition or processes within the water body or watershed. Fish tissue monitoring can reveal bioaccumulation of toxic substances such as mercury or PCBs, which can then be used to set fish consumption guidelines that protect human health. Similarly, bacteria sampling can advise people in coastal areas of where shellfishing is safe, or whether it's safe to go swimming at the beach.


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Common Monitoring Objectives

Water Quality Monitoring Objectives

To properly manage a water resource, you need to know all about the water body and the watershed it drains. Watershed monitoring is a major part of the process for collecting this information and is therefore an essential component to water quality assessment and to watershed management. The information collected can support sound decision-making by identifying high quality waters and tracking their condition over time, by providing clues to the sources and levels of pollution for waters that are impaired or threatened, by helping managers understand the impacts of human activities within the watershed, and by providing input data used in water quality models. So without crucial monitoring data, we might not know exactly where a pollution problem exists, where we need to focus our watershed management energies, or where we may have made progress. Water quality monitoring programs are designed to serve many purposes.

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Section 4 of 19