Keeping a Finger on the Pulse

by the Morro Bay National Estuary Program

Whether slogging through the mud to study eelgrass beds, collecting data on local creeks, or a variety of other tasks around the Morro Bay estuary and its watershed, the volunteers of the Morro Bay National Estuary Program's monitoring program are a dedicated group. These volunteers come from many walks of life, but whether student or retiree, they make an important contribution to help protect a valuable resource.

Volunteers often ask "What happens to all of this data that we collect?"

The data has multiple purposes. One of those functions is to support and inform partners' efforts of restoration, protection, and education throughout the watershed. A second purpose is to maintain a long-term dataset of conditions throughout the watershed and bay to determine how those conditions are changing over time. And the third purpose is to study the effectiveness of specific improvement projects.

To help meet these three goals, the monitoring program has developed a data summary report which summarizes data collected from 2002 through 2010. This recently completed report is organized into chapters by waterbody, so that readers can look at all of the different types of data collected for each creek in the Morro Bay watershed. The report also studies monitoring data from improvement projects such as riparian fencing efforts (which keeps cattle out of creeks), the California Men's Colony Wastewater Treatment Plant upgrade, and others.

One of the projects analyzed in the report examined fencing installed on Dairy Creek in El Chorro Regional Park to keep cattle out of the creek, which has resulted in measurable improvements to water quality. Because of this project, the water downstream of the fenced area stays cooler, has higher oxygen concentrations, and has lower bacteria concentrations than water upstream of the project. Better water quality means better habitat for fish and other aquatic life, as well as greater safety for humans who access the creek through the county park.

For more information on the program, visit the MBNEP's website and click on the Volunteer link. To see the full report containing information on this project and others, visit MBNEP Volunteer Summaries.

More information on this and other estuary related topics can be found at the Morro Bay National Estuary Program website.