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Come Join Us!

The National Water Quality Monitoring Council will host its 13th National Monitoring Conference during the week of April 24–28, 2023, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Monitoring for water quality/quantity and public and ecological health in all water resources will be represented, including lakes and wetlands, rivers and streams, coastal waters and estuaries, and groundwater. All federal, state, tribal and local water professionals, nonprofits, academia, water consultants and industry, and volunteer scientists are welcome at this important national forum.  The conference will be offered in a hybrid format primarily in person, including a limited virtual format.

Networking and opportunities to create new relationships will abound for attendees. Whether you seek to develop new skills, learn about the latest technologies, or simply exchange information on a wide variety of topics relevant to water resources, the National Monitoring Conference is for you. The conference attracts the highest quality professional papers and posters and is a destination conference for many in the field.

2023 Conference Themes Include:

  • 50 Years After the Clean Water Act and Similar Efforts — a retrospective & prospective; lessons learned in water quality condition, assessment, justice & equity and long-term trend monitoring
  • Effectiveness Monitoring — Are management actions working? Restoration results, best management practices, monitoring and education/outreach successes, inform priorities and track progress in protecting and restoring the condition of our nation’s waters
  • Protecting High Quality Waters — monitoring to identify and evaluate waters; inform/implement protection strategies
  • Monitoring Collaboration — national, tribal, regional, state and local initiatives, partnerships, and councils; inclusive stakeholder identification and engagement; Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
  • Volunteer and Community-Based Monitoring — volunteer monitoring, school & community groups and watershed associations, data to action, stewardship, increasing diversity & inclusion
  • Aggregating, Analyzing,Visualizing & Disseminating Data and Information — Open data science tools and tool development; data portals; data equity; R-Shiny applications, story maps, and dashboards; communicating assessment, condition, and trends to decision makers and public
  • Hot Topics in Monitoring and Analysis
    • Climate Change (impacts on quantity, quality, and biota)
    • Harmful Algal Blooms (freshwater & marine)
    • Persistent Toxic Contaminants (emerging and bioaccumulative contaminants, including PFAS)
    • Nutrients (dynamics, impacts, monitoring, modeling, and analysis)
    • Source Identification (nonpoint source, point source, stormwater, atmospheric deposition)
    • New and Emerging Technologies (in situ and continuous monitoring, remote sensing, analytical methods, eDNA)
    • Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Please distribute this announcement to your staff and water colleagues.
Download a PDF of the Save the Date Flyer.

NWQMC Transform Your Hidden Racial Bias Workshop

Monday, April 10 @ 12:00-3:00 pm
Monday, April 17 @ 12:00-3:00 pm
via Zoom

Pre-registration and attendance at both sessions is required.

Science shows we all have implicit or unconscious biases, which is part of being human. Certain implicit biases, such as racial, gender or age do cause harm and perpetuate systems that oppress, exclude and divide us. Divisions keep us from attracting and retaining top talent, drawing out the best in each other, creating and cultivating effective teams, organizations and a culture of inclusion and race equity. Unaddressed, it is like missing a leg on a stool that we need to stand on to succeed and be effective in our work. As leaders we have a responsibility to learn how to improve our knowledge, skills and competencies to increase our collective impact and better support our colleagues, organizations and constituents.

Learn more and register here!

NWQMC statement of commitment: The NWQMC is committed to promoting justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) within all aspects of water quality monitoring and assessment. Our success in achieving water quality goals depends on learning from people of all backgrounds. We are committed to fostering an inclusive and respectful culture for all participants and actively improving JEDI throughout Council activities by working aggressively to remove systemic and institutional barriers that add layers of disadvantage and environmental injustice to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), LGBTQ+ communities, persons with disabilities, and other minoritized groups. We acknowledge that our initiatives are a work in progress and commit to training and educating our members on implicit biases and historical environmental injustices so that we may continuously improve how we amplify underrepresented voices and support opportunities for the broader water quality monitoring community.
Questions? Learn more about the Council and previous conferences at: https://www.epa.gov/awma/national-water-quality-monitoring-council. Contact the 2023 National Water Monitoring Conference Co-Chairs Danielle Grunzke, grunzke.danielle@epa.gov; Felipe Arzayus, felipe.arzayus@noaa.gov; and Candice Hopkins, chopkins@usgs.gov. To get on our conference mailing list, please contact Philip Forsberg, pforsberg@nalms.org.