The first ever Alabama Water Watch Virtual Annual Meeting was a success! Although we weren’t able to meet in person for our Annual Meeting this year, we are thankful that we still got the opportunity to recognize and highlight our volunteers in a meaningful way.
If you weren’t able to join us for the meeting this year, read on for a brief recap of the events of the day…
We are excited to announce that our new Director of the Auburn University Water Resources Center (WRC) is Dr. Eve Brantley! We encourage folks to leave words of encouragement in the comments on this post 🙂 Read on to learn more about Dr. Brantley and why she will make a great director!
Congratulations to our 2019-2020 AWWard Winners! Thank you all for your dedication, enthusiasm, and incredible contributions to the AWW Program. You are an integral part of our team!
Its heating up and the summer months are upon us! As Alabamians go out and hit the beaches and rivers this summer for swimming, paddling, and fishing, it is important that water quality data is easily accessible and up-to-date. In addition to the Alabama Water Watch public data tools, an application called Swim Guide is another useful tool for determining if it is safe to swim.
Your data and observations can help let people know if it is safe to swim this summer! Learn how you can get involved by reading below.
Carl Woida has been a volunteer monitor with Alabama Water Watch for 19 years. When asked to share about his monitoring experience, he wrote a very thoughtful reflection about his time as a volunteer. We are excited to share his story. Read on to learn more about Carl, his monitoring, lessons learned, and why he enjoys being involved with the AWW Program!
My name is Carl Woida and I have been a Volunteer Monitor with AWW since 2001. I have two monitoring sites on the Paint Rock River, a major tributary of the Tennessee River. My monitoring group’s name is the Scott Branch Water Watch. Scott Branch is a small stream feeding the Paint Rock River. I am 75 years old and to date, since my initial certification in 2001, I have been recertified 10 times and have submitted 276 chemistry reports to AWW.
Janne Debes started volunteering with AWW when she was certified as a Bacteriological Monitor in winter 2016. Since then, she has joined several monitoring groups, including Save Our Saugahatchee, Lake Watch of Lake Martin (where she serves on the board), and the USFS Tuskegee National Forest group. She has collected a total of over 320 Water Chemistry and 110 Bacteriological Monitoring data records. It’s easy to see why she has been named the Alabama Water Watch Monitor of the Year two years in a row!
Janne accepts her Monitor of the Year Award for 2018, made by Laura Bell (left of Janne) of Rabbit Fish Ceramics.
Because Janne is so AWWesome, we thought you would enjoy learning a little more about her, or should we say you would like to Meet Our Wonderful Water Watcher.
We have wrapped up our final USFS CitSci Project Workshop for 2020!
AWW and the National Forests in Alabama held three water quality monitoring workshops in the Bankhead, Tuskegee , and Conecuh National Forests. We would like to thank everyone who attended these workshops, and especially all of the the project participants who have picked up sites to monitor!
We have recently had a few volunteers who have entered data online, but have not seen their data on the Data from Tables or Data from Maps. This could be because it was not submitted successfully into the AWW Server. We want to help you ensure that you have successfully submitted your data to AWW. Follow the steps below to learn how to check if we received your data!