Streamwatch is a citizen science water monitoring program that enables community groups to monitor the quality and health of local waterways.
Connecting People with our Waterways
A Local Community Citizen Science Water Program
Monitors the health of waterways and riparian areas
Provides pollution and biosecurity alerts to authorities
Supplies long term environmental data for planning
Connects people and nature with a practical purpose
Eyes and ears on our water
The Streamwatch Process in Our Waterways
Equipment + People + Education = Publicly Accessible Results + Reliable Alerts
The Role of Streamwatch
By empowering local citizens to monitor the health of their waterways and contribute valuable data to the scientific community, Streamwatch helps to raise awareness about the importance of water quality monitoring and conservation, and ultimately supports efforts to protect and preserve our waterways for future generations.
What has changed with Streamwatch
- Comparison with professional water testing equipment done for the long term Standard Kit
- New Alert Kit to engage all kids and adults: quicker, cheaper, no chemicals, instant results to upload via app
- Rapid riparian assessment and options to participate in blitzes for waterbugs, micro-plastics and others
History and Results
Streamwatch was initiated by Sydney Water and the Sydney Catchment Authority. From it’s humble beginnings, Streamwatch started with a trial of 15 schools in 1990. This led to Waterwatch Australia as the umbrella coordinating group. Streamwatch was move to GSL in 2019.
Since it’s formation, 31,000 data sets to the online database have been collected and cleaned to provide 12,000 consistent data sets, which will be uploaded to the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). Much of the data is already in SEED (NSW Government’s portal for Sharing and Enabling Environmental Data).
This program has strong quality assurance elements built in to ensure that results are sound, reliable and useful. All Streamwatch groups are required to follow the same methods and use approved equipment to sample and then enter their results into the Streamwatch website.
Stay up-to-date with Streamwatch
Connect with the Streamwatch – join the community on Facebook, read the latest news, or sign up for the Streamwatch newsletter.
