These are best practices that we ask you try to stick to as much as possible. Work in pairs to make work more efficient.
Store your kits in a place where they won’t get over heated (please don’t leave in your car).
Most of the kits/gear come with directions that are pretty good. Read these for details on individual kits.
- Sample from the same spot and at the same time of day each time
- Jan – Mar: 1 sample every two weeks
- April – Oct: 1 sample per week
- Nov – Dec: 1 sample every 2 weeks
- A good sampling spot will include easily reachable water, deeper than 1 foot, with some space to work in nearby (shade is good)
- Water sample for dissolved oxygen should be taken directly from lake according to directions
- This procedure takes a while. One person can get this started while the other moves on to step #4
- When collecting water for sampling with the big, brown bottle, always fill bottle, empty, and then re-fill with new water.
- Measure conductivity and temperature first (immediately after sampling), then nitrate, ammonia, phosphate, and pH
- The dissolved oxygen, ammonia, and nitrate kits produce hazardous waste (mercury, sodium azide, and cadmium, respectively).
- Please dispose of in WASTE container and contact us to pick up when it’s near full.
- Rinse anything you used with water squirt bottle
- All data may be directly input online at www.monmouth.edu/clonet/field-data/. This is recommended but there are also paper data sheets that can then be transferred to the online database. Ultimately, all data must go to the webpage, please.
Resources & Downloads
- View results of sampling as of September 2021 (XLS, 133KB)
- Slides from 2020 CLONet Workshop: Jason Adolf (PDF, 3 MB) | Erin Conlon (PDF, 2 MB)
- Dr. Jason Adolf presentation from 11/1/19 CLONet Workshop (PDF, 7 MB)
- Dr. Thomas Herrington presentation from 11/1/19 CLONet Workshop (PPT, 1 MB)
- Citizen Science Checkup Report, July 2019 (PDF, 500KB)
- Download our Water Quality Test Kits fact sheet (PDF, 630KB)