Volunteer Creek Monitoring Program

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Currently the monitoring program is inactive, however we are still providing data from the Biossessment and GPS survey efforts.

The Contra Costa Watershed Forum joined forces with the Contra Costa Clean Water Program to monitor and assess creek conditions. The Volunteer Creek Monitoring Program assists community members and local organizations in collecting data on local creeks and watersheds.

The information gathered by volunteers is used for a variety of purposes:

  • to assess the current conditions of Contra Costa County streams

  • to compare stream health to state water quality standards

  • to calculate water quality and biological integrity indices

  • to serve as a baseline for comparison in future studies

Bioassessments

Creeks are complex ecosystems that are home to many varieties of aquatic life, including fishes, invertebrates, and plants. In order to assess the impacts of our everyday actions to local creeks and watersheds, we use aquatic insects as indicators, a practice known as bioassessment. Community members, local college students, and volunteer groups can help collect specimens for identification. Volunteers learned more about the health of their neighborhood creeks and identified potential problem areas. While water samples yield a detailed identification of the water at the time of sampling, the density and diversity of bugs in our creeks yield a watershed-level perspective of water quality and habitat viability over time. Some organisms are very pollution tolerant, while others are very intolerant. By looking at the populations and diversity of organisms, scientists can learn a lot about the quality of the creek. Unlike chemical water testing, which may be expensive and gives detailed information about the conditions only at the time of sampling, bioassessment integrates overall conditions of the creek over time.

Bioassessment Data

Alhambra Creek Data

Antioch-East Creek Data

Antioch-West Creek Data

Baxter Creek Data

Cerrito Creek Data

Grayson Creek Data

Kellogg Creek Data

Kirker Creek Data

Las Trampas Creek Data

Marsh Creek Data

Moraga Creek Data

Mt Diablo Creek Data

Pine Creek Data

Pinole Creek Data

Refugio Creek Data

Rheem Creek Data

Rodeo Creek Data

San Pablo Creek Data

San Ramon Creek Data

Wildcat Creek Data

Contra Costa Monitoring and Assessment Program

Preliminary Assessment of Aquatic Life Use Condition in Contra Costa Creeks

Summary of Benthic Macroinvertebrate Bioassessment Results (2007)

Summary of Benthic Macroinvertebrate Bioassessment Results (2008)

GPS Creek Surveys

The data gathered through the program are available for use in various projects:

Monitoring Assistance and Resources

The Watershed Monitoring Coordinator can provide assistance to groups in Contra Costa County who are involved in creek monitoring activities.  Equipment can be borrowed from the program (when it isn’t being used by the program) and technical assistance is availiable to provide help with data collection activities.

Using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, volunteers monitor the current conditions of their neighborhood creeks. In the summer and fall adventurous volunteers wade into local creeks, mapping the physical attributes of the stream channel (substrate, canopy cover, bank characteristics, etc.), extent and type of native and invasive vegetation, and human influences (outfalls, dams, etc.). By walking the creek channels in the County, we are able to document many different aspects of the channel that are too fine to detect on aerial photographs. As we walk through the creek, looking at the habitat and man-made structures, we enter information into our GPS units. Creek surveys provide up-to-date information on the state of the creeks, helping us identify sources of pollution and areas for habitat restoration. The scientific data we collect is used by a number of organizations working to protect and restore our aquatic resources in the Bay Area. Our Global Positioning System (GPS) Creek Survey program has established protocols that combines the precision of GPS technology with the detail of a traditional creek survey. Unlike GPS car navigational systems that identify locations on a map, our creek surveys actually help improve existing and create new maps.  If you have GIS software and would like a copy of the creek or waterbody layers for the County, those can be found here.