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Developing a monitoring plan <br />Any strategic planning effort can seem daunting <br />when looked at as a whole. For this reason, the <br />process of developing a monitoring plan has been <br />divided into 12 steps: <br />1) Identify what is known about your water- <br />shed. Before developing any water qualiry- <br />monitoring plan it is important to find out all <br />you can about the watershed and the water <br />bodies you plan on monitoring. <br />2) Determine your monitoring questions. <br />What do you know, what don't you know and <br />what do you need to find out? This knowledge <br />provides the basis to assess any problem sources <br />and what, if anything is being done about <br />them, the desired outcomes of monitoring and <br />how the data will be used. It is the key to devel- <br />oping aclear, achievable monitoring goal. <br />3) Identify data uses and data users. <br />Identifying how your data will be used and <br />who will use it, a.k.a. your data user, is one of <br />the most important steps in your monitoring <br />plan. It will influence many of the subsequent <br />steps. For example, the level of quality assur- <br />ance (QA) and quality control (QC) needed is <br />directly related to how the data will be used <br />and the expectations of the data user. QA/QC <br />for data used to influence local decision mak- <br />ers is more stringent than for data used strictly <br />to educate Lakeshore owners on how their <br />actions affect water quality. Good communi- <br />cation with your data user may also lead to <br />technical assistance and additional funding. <br />4) Put it all together to choose <br />an assessment. All this information is then <br />pulled together into an assessment of your <br />waterbody, which is a way to define the health <br />of a lake, stream or river. There are two gener- <br />al assessment types to choose from: condition <br />and trend, and impact. In condition and trend <br />assessments, data is either compared to known <br />benchmarks for your region or benchmarks <br />based on previous results (baseline) to deter- <br />mine how conditions have changed over time <br />(trend). In an impact assessment, data is col- <br />lected to determine if a particular pollution <br />source is causing a problem. <br />5) Determine what and how you will <br />monitor. Now you have something to <br />build the technical. portion of your plan <br />on. Start by selecting the parameters to be <br />measured and how they will be collected. <br />Some of the considerations might include: <br />do the chosen parameters provide the <br />answer to your monitoring goal, can they <br />be used by the data users, are there bench- <br />marks for them and how difficult are they <br />to monitor? Once chosen there is a whole <br />myriad of decisions including how will the <br />samples be collected, stored, transported <br />and analyzed. This is all documented in <br />the workbook to assure that everyone <br />understands the process and what type of <br />data will result. <br />COURTESY OF MINNESOTA POLLUTION CONTROL AGENCY <br />Page 4 <br />