Virginia Save Our Streams
Virginians have the right to know whether or not streams are safe for swimming, fishing, playing, and drinking. Virginia Save Our Streams monitors water quality of Virginia’s streams and educates the public about importance of clean water. Hundreds of VA SOS volunteers collect stream quality data from over 200 stream sites across the state. Monitors collect, identify, and sort benthic macroinvertebrates from the stream. By identifying which macroinvertebrates live in a local stream, volunteers can calculate a stream health score.
Having site-specific and timely water quality information allows us to identify pollution problems, determine how to restore streams, and assess success of restoration efforts. The information our volunteers collect is sent to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, who can use this information to target streams for further monitoring, track restoration efforts, and educate the public.
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Who We Are
Virginia Save Our Streams is a program of the Izaak Walton League of America. Founded in 1922, the Izaak Walton League is one of the nation’s oldest and most respected conservation organizations. With a powerful grassroots network of nearly 200 local chapters nationwide, the League takes a common-sense approach toward protecting our country’s natural heritage and improving outdoor recreation opportunities for all Americans. For more information about our Virginia chapters, please visit the Virginia Division of the Izaak Walton League.
Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative connects Community Science initiatives across groups and regions in order to amplify voices and enhance our understanding of the health of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. To accomplish this, we provide technical, programmatic, and outreach support in order to integrate volunteer-based water quality and macroinvertebrate monitoring data into a centralized data hub, the Chesapeake Data Explorer. These data are publicly available and used by the Chesapeake Bay Program to assess the health of the Chesapeake Bay and watershed. IWLA is a service provider in the CMC and VA SOS data is integrated into watershed wide data sharing.