Leveraging Tribal Government and Community Science Data to Build a Freshwater Harmful Algal Bloom Monitoring Network for California
Working in close partnership with the Internet of Water (IoW), The Commons has released final recommendations outlining best practices in data structure and integration, enabling the State of California to leverage community science data for the early warning of Freshwater Harmful Algal Blooms (FHABs). This effort was part of a broader coalition of data users and producers consisting of Native American Tribal Governments, Leading Community Science NGOs, California’s Water Control Boards, members of the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard and Assessment, and the Water Data Collaborative.
Due to climate change, nutrient loading, and many other human-induced factors, HABs are becoming more frequent and the peak bloom season lasts longer. Although not statistically correlated our Water Reporters have witnessed these blooms first hand throughout a variety of watersheds across the nation:
What’s more is that robust community monitoring programs, their data and volunteers combined with powerful software such as Water Reporter can lead to tangible policy outcomes. For example, Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper’s Water Reporter Map was used to advocate for the passage of the Water Resources Development Act that carves out dedicated funding for monitoring and restoration practice implementation in Lake Erie.
Report Executive Summary
Freshwater Harmful Algal Blooms (FHABs) present a growing threat to the state of California, endangering the welfare of wildlife and domestic animals in addition to impairing the recreational and cultural uses of certain bodies of water. In response, a robust system to monitor and report on FHABs is an important step in mitigating the impacts of FHAB events, and to alerting the public to such risks. To increase the capacity of the state to respond to FHABs, monitoring data from Tribal Governments and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are needed to integrate with current California monitoring data, creating a robust system for monitoring, reporting, and alert. This report outlines the initial phase of a multi-phase effort to integrate state FHAB monitoring data with non-state FHAB monitoring data to create such a statewide system.
The implementation plan described below is the result of engagements with Tribal Governments and NGOs as well as with California state agencies and other external partners to develop a detailed strategy to incorporate non-State data into the California state data model and alert system. The plan and recommendations described via this document address a need to address data ingestion processes common beyond this specific use case. As such, the information provided here may offer a pathway to beginning this process for other entities looking to modernize their database infrastructure and build programs that accept data from a network of monitoring programs.
Information gathered from engagements and survey results revealed a 1) willingness and ability to support state efforts toward FHAB monitoring; 2) the capacity of non-state entities to enhance state capacity. Based on the information collected via engagements, surveys, and feedback, the report provides 3) a detailed data model outlining the ingestion and data management process; and 4) an explicit set of recommendations for the resulting system to communicate risk to decision-makers and the general public. These recommendations are as follows:
- Implement a cost-effective, tiered process for gathering data that considers the capacity of the partnering Tribal Governments and community science organizations.
- Improve how data are accessed and used by external partners and the public through the development of data products (e.g. interactive dashboards) that better communicate the status of reported FHABs in California and the levels of risk associated with associated FHAB data
- Create an open FHAB data framework that offers the ability to export data in a machine-readable format.
- Develop alert systems that notify participating members of the public on FHAB events
This report further details data collection and management requirements, the development of an Application Programming Interface (API), and the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and modeling to improve information transfer and delivery. The implementation of such recommendations are based upon funding support for Phase 2 of this project.
With a reduction in federal and state funding for environmental monitoring, community scientists and their data have the opportunity to be the tip of the in accelerate the government’s ability to alert the general public of HABs.
