Realizing the Potential of Community Based Monitoring in Assessing the Health of Our Waters /

The health of our fresh water is vital to the places we play, the food we grow, the businesses we work for, and the well-being of the ecosystems supporting us all. [...] Through this process, WWF-Canada reached out to hundreds of organizations The Potential of Community Based and government agencies to find the necessary data to Monitoring conduct the assessments. [...] That is, the data collection is initiated from the community and it is accessible to the community afterwards, no matter who is collecting the data. [...] Photo by Heather Lescheid The Professionalization of CBM Increased recognition of the value of citizen science has resulted in the development of best practices, shared learning and coordination of efforts. [...] These are: 1. Ensuring Credible Data - the legitimacy of CBM data is dependent on the quality of the information produced so it is important that data is collected and analyzed in ways that can be trusted and that respect and benefit the communities involved.