As a young college student, I worked with the Susquehanna River Tri-State Association to develop and implement a “stream monitoring” or “stream watch program”. This program included basic training related to the water cycle, pathways for pollution migration, hydrology, water quality, water testing, and field safety. During the training, one citizen coined the phrase; it is simple, we should care about the stream, because “We ALL Live Downstream”. The River Watch program partnered college students with community volunteers. Most of the community volunteers were retired seniors with a diverse background in business, industry, and NGO’s. During the initial stage of the project, the citizens reported that they got involved with the program to “Protect The Environment”, “Find Illegal Discharges”, “Check the Local Sewage Treatment Plant”, “Getting Rid of the Red Water”, “Sulfur Smell” and to “Protect the Fishery”. The citizens were mostly focused on finding illegal point source discharges, acid mine drainage, and improving stream “health” to maintain the fishery, but few really understood what or how the stream and water shed functioned. Many of the citizens were unaware of the importance and role of non-point source pollution or how surface water and groundwater are connected and the importance of maintaining groundwater recharge to help to maintain the thermal quality and water quality of the stream network.
During the period from 1984 to 2011, we actively worked with citizens, environmental groups, landowners, and local colleges and universities to implement an effective “Citizen-Science based Environmental Monitoring Program” and in 2009 we started the Citizen Groundwater and Surface Water Database to compile certified laboratory data that was being developed during the initial stages of natural gas development in Pennsylvania. Since 1984, the monitoring tools and methods have changed, but training process for the “citizen scientist” has always been about developing critical thinking skills, helping to build connections, and properly educating and informing the citizen scientist. Over the past 30 years, the environmental monitoring equipment has evolved from bulky field laboratory equipment with significant laboratory support to small more technologically advance multiple parameter sensors that require laboratory support for maintain quality control. The term “Boots on the Ground” tends to be used to mean troops on the ground in water. During this time period, we had a rise of the "Social Justice Environmental Scientist". I am not a fan of this approach and terminology, because we are mixing fact based science with feelings, perfections, and ideologies. This mixture tends to cause the scientific method to get a bit to flexible.
We need "Boots on the Ground" - This is not about war, but the “Citizen Scientist”. The "Citizen Scientist" is properly trained, equipped, and informed citizen that is a significant field asset and human sensor to help protect the environment and human health. Even today, the most effective sensor is the human eyes, ears, and nose and a thinking brain with a pair of boots on the ground. The development and deployment of affordable real-time sensors with data logging capacity is now expanding the citizens role to not just be a pair of eyes in the field, but also the ability to track water quality and environmental changes spatially and temporally If you are going to be a "Citizen Scientist", I would strongly suggest you act as a fact-based professional that uses the scientific method and if possible try to put a given ideology to the side, but go with the facts, the data, and the information. The public is best served when they get the facts and not the fear.
The Environmental Protection Agency defines a watershed as “the area that drains to a common waterway, such as a stream, lake, estuary, wetland, aquifer, or even the ocean” and one classic definition or description by John Wesley Powell is “that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community”. The only problem is that most of our communities are disconnected from this watershed concept. In general, our municipal boundaries are not contiguous with watershed boundaries and in many cases the natural stream channels have been buried, altered, or otherwise destroyed through degrading, urban development, and agricultural processes. Also, the watershed concepts only explains a portion of the water cycle and does not adequately depict the connection between surface water (wetlands, lakes, estuaries, oceans) and groundwater and leaves the impression that groundwater flows in underground rivers. When we discuss the watershed concept, we like to present the idea based on an understanding of the balance between water recharge, conveyance, and discharge and with respect to the water cycle.
The water cycle is a conceptual wheel that depicts the concept that there is a closed system for water on our planet. When Bruce Lee spoke about Kung-Fu, he said, “Be Like Water”. For the martial artist, this tends to have a meaning to not be firm are steadfast to a concept or an approach, but be willing to change and adapt. Be Like water – water flows and adapts to its environment and the properties of water make it a critical resource to help establish life on this planet. Before we can talk about the water cycle, how much water is on the planet Earth? Table 1 provides a breakdown of the amount of water on the planet.
Table 1 | The Amount of Water on the Earth.
Source: Igor Shiklomanov's chapter "World fresh water resources" in Peter H. Gleick (editor), 1993, Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World's Fresh Water Resources.
Therefore, 99.2% of the water is in the form of ocean, seawater, saline water, ice, or swamp water and only 0.77 percent of the water is considered fresh unfrozen water. Of the total amount of freshwater on the planet, 68.7 percent of the freshwater is “stored” as ice caps, glaciers, and permanent snow.
The water cycle is a cycle, there is no real beginning or end and the cycle tracks the transportation of water through its various phases. For the sake of discussion, we will start in the ocean. Through a process of evaporation and/or sublimation water is transformed from a liquid into a gas. This gas enters the atmosphere and as the air cools or warms or the pressure changes the degree of saturation for the water in the air increases or decreases. The process of condensation creates clouds. The clouds form when moist, rising warm air cools and ultimately expands in the atmosphere. As the water vapor in the air condenses, this forms tiny water droplets. Clusters of rising cooling and condensing masses of air and water are clouds.. At some point, the atmosphere becomes saturated with water and water droplets become too large to stay in the atmosphere and ultimately are acted upon by gravity to fall towards the earth surface. Depending on the temperature, the water may ultimate return to the Earth surface as dew, drizzle, rainfall, frost, snow, sleet, fog, or even hail.
So as a Citizen Scientist please be a scientist first and be like water. Follow the facts and uses these facts to help transport and inform our fellow citizens and social organizations, but be willing to adapt and change or be transformed based on new facts and information. We do not need fear scare tactics to inform, educate, and make positive change, because the facts will support the policies, plans, and suggests, just like the facts support a hypothesis that ultimate evolves into a theory and a law.
