Citizen volunteers and students can now send their very own water data and restoration project information to an exciting new interactive data bank at the University of Washington. Up to now, this grassroots movement has had no repository where their data can be stored, reviewed, and retrieved for possible use by agencies, scientists and nonprofits. Data was kept on personal computers or in file drawers. Now it can be safely stored in a neutral location and compared with past datasets and other locations.
Groups can find each other by name of organization, water body, county, or watershed.
And data entry is easy, fun, and quick. Well, not necessarily. The key is to provide opportunities to tell how the data was collected and what methods were followed, to indicate to potential data users how credible it is. Data of known quality. For every measurement a volunteer enters, they must select the method they used - and there's ample room for comments.