Charlotte Harbor Aquatic Preserve’s Biannual Refresher for Water Quality Volunteers

CHAP staff, along with the help from regional coordinating offices Estero Bay AP and Cedar Point Environmental Park, hosted the biannual volunteer training. Known as the Quality Assurance (QA) training, it serves as a refresher for samplers as well as offers time to condition instruments, sample for accuracy from the same waterbody and give program updates.  

Once a year, volunteers also conduct a temperature test to compare their individual YSI instrument (a device used to measure and monitor a variety of water quality parameters) to a calibrated National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) thermometer. This additional test and holding the QAs twice a year are vital components of the approved QA plan for the Charlotte Harbor Estuaries Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring Network program.