This Guide will walk groups and organizations through the steps of designing an appropriate monitoring program for lakes, streams, rivers and wetlands. This Guide also is significant in that it celebrates and highlights past and ongoing efforts of volunteer monitors and their programs in Vermont. The Water Quality Division is grateful to past and current volunteers and hopes this Guide will refresh their enthusiasm and inspire new groups to develop programs. Volunteer monitors also will find a wealth of Vermont-specific resources in this Guide, as well as resources from national groups and organizations such as the U.S. EPA, USGS and the River Network that are involved in volunteer monitoring.

• Front Cover & Title Page (pdf, 569 KB)
• Table of Contents (pdf, 166 KB)
• Acknowledgements (pdf, 152 KB)
• Section 1:  Introduction: The History of Volunteer Monitoring and the Monitoring Design Worksheet (pdf, 652 KB)
• Section 2:  Defining Your Questions: Why, What and Who (pdf, 647 KB)
• Section 3:  Choosing Parameters to Support Your Questions
• Part 1 (pdf, 1.3 MB)
• Part 2 (pdf, 7.8 MB)
• Section 4:  Data Quality (pdf, 391 KB)
• Section 5:  Planning Where, When and How to Monitor (pdf, 785 KB)
• Section 6:  Data Management (pdf, 250 KB)
• Section 7:  Converting Data to Information (pdf, 1.1 MB)
• Section 8:  Evaluating Monitoring Program Performance (pdf, 405 KB)
• References (pdf, 58 KB)
• Appendix A:  Resources (pdf, 79 KB)
• Appendix B:  Considerations for Selecting and Using a Contact Laboratory (pdf, 171 KB)
• Appendix C:  Existing Volunteer Surface Water Monitoring Manuals (pdf, 63 KB)
• Appendix D:  Equipment and Supply Vendors (pdf, 54 KB)
• Appendix E:  Useful Tools for Monitoring (pdf, 650 KB)
• Appendix F:  VTDEC Uses of Volunteer Data (pdf, 61 KB)
• Appendix G:  Glossary (pdf, 77 KB)
• Appendix H:  Acronyms, Abbreviations and Symbols (pdf, 84 KB)
• Back Cover (pdf, 424 KB)