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Planning is an Intense Team Activity Planning is an intensive activity. Developing a monitoring plan is no exception. For this reason the workshop was done in two sessions with time in-between to process the information. The majority of workshop time was spent in actually developing a monitoring plan with the aid of worksheets and individualized assistance from the facilitators. Planning is also a team activity. Groups in the pilot training brought teams consisting of 2-4 people. The seven groups chose team members representing diverse interests and perspectives. Teams included volunteer leaders, volunteer monitors, watershed or conservation organization staff, data users and technical advisors. Participating groups found the team approach made it easier to create a shared vision, assess the knowledge base of the watershed, water resources, group capabilities, and to formulate monitoring goals. Getting to Know Your Watershed Session. one began with groups getting to know each other. Then began the work of assessing what each group knew about their watershed and water bodies they planned to monitor. This knowledge provided the basis to assess the problem sources, the desired outcomes of monitoring and how-the data will be used. This knowledge is key to the development of a clear achievable monitoring goal. Good plan development doesn't occur in a vacuum. For this reason, time was spent identifying the data users, why they might want to use it and what they expected them to do with the data. The last step of day was to choose possible monitoring parameters to accomplish their monitoring goal During the interim period, each group went back home to process all the informa- tion. Each group met with additional group members and data users to collect their views. This information was used in session two to verify that the monitor- ing goals and parameters chosen met the monitoring capabilities of their group. Final Plan evelopent and Approval Session two covered the more technical planning aspects. This included the what, where, when and how of moni- toring. The next step was to determine the desired data quality level and develop a quality assurance and quality control system to achieve it. A monitoring plan doesn't stop at the collection of data. The .data has to be man- aged and stored in a planned manner. This makes it easier to tu_~-n the data into info_+-maton that car_ be shared with data users and the public. How data is presented and what you want to happen as a result of the presenta- tions depends on your target audience; therefore, the audience and presentation methods were identified ahead of time. To implement a successful monitoring program, Who will be doing the work, what are the technical needs and who will provide them, the task needed to implement the program, and timelines were identified. The last de- velopment step was planning for short-term and long-term program evaluation. Because plans axe living docu- ments, it was necessary to look at all plan elements to see if you were successful in achieving your goals, and what needs improvement. Using the worksheets and what they learned, workshop participants went home to put the finishing touches on their monitoring plans. These draft plans were submitted and reviewed. Six have been approved. Funds up to $3000 have been distributed for 2004 plan implementation! We're excited by this process and look forward to the next training round to begin in August 2004