Mar 1, 2021

With the Ocean Protection Council-funded trash monitoring project concluded, the project team is eager to deliver its results to you. The team has compiled its data, composed its reports, and is now ready to share with you two reports, intended for use by trash-monitoring practitioners and the diverse constellation of stakeholders who benefit from trash-monitoring efforts. Now available on trashmonitoring.org are:

Both products depend on the resources and cooperation of key organizations such as the Stormwater Monitoring Coalition (SMC), the Bay Area Stormwater Management Agencies Association (BASMAA), US Environmental Protection Agency, and the California Department of Public Health.

This trash monitoring methods project offers guidance on the certainty, precision, and interoperability of results for four monitoring methods. After all, as we look at the "big picture" of trash in California's creeks, streams, and wetlands, variability in monitoring methods makes it very challenging to report, with any certainty, the amounts of trash and whether conditions are getting better or worse. With your cooperation, this outlook now might improve. 

Project Background:

The California Ocean Protection Council (OPC), in close partnership with the State Water Resources Control Board, recognized the importance of interoperable methods for trash monitoring. OPC sought to accelerate the adoption of trash monitoring across the state by funding the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP) and the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) to collaboratively develop and implement the California Trash Monitoring Methods Project.  The project’s goal is to develop a library of trash monitoring methods with known levels of precision, accuracy, and cross-comparability of their results, which will be linked to management questions.

We welcome you to visit our site, TrashMonitoring.org, to find more information about this project.

Other Contributors: 
Steve Weisberg
Programs and Focus Areas: 
Environmental Informatics Program
Information Technology Systems
Software Engineering