Water Monitoring Strategy - Tier I Baseline Monitoring

Tier I Monitoring || Tier II Monitoring || Tier III Monitoring || Related

Thumbnails link to PDF Files of Tier I Sections.

Lakes: About 3,000 of Wisconsin's 15,081 lakes, covering about 1 million surface acres, are less than 50 acres and 2,000 are greater than 50 acres. Monitoring focuses on larger public access lakes (>100 acres); smaller lakes are included on a reduced scale.

Rivers: Monitoring of Wisconsin’s large (non-wadeable) rivers is composed of three primary components: Biotic Integrity, Long Term Trend (LTT) monitoring for ambient water quality, and Flow Gaging.

Streams: WDNR's goal is to achieve comprehensive assessment of the state’s stream resources. Given the large number of streams, sampling populations of streams is necessary. A random stratified sample design is employed to conduct baseline stream assessments.

Wetlands: Monitoring incorporates “three tier framework”: landscape assessment for broad inventory data by remote sensing; rapid assessment includes simple rapid protocols at specific sites; and intensive site assessment, uses intensive ecological measures to score the relative condition of a site, based on research-derived indices of biological integrity.

Great Lakes: Includes three primary activities: Lake Michigan Major Tributary Phosphorus Loading; Great Lakes Fishery Assessment; and Pathogen Indicator Monitoring on Great Lakes Beaches. These three activities are unique to the Great Lakes.

Mississippi River: State-sponsored water quality monitoring work efforts are coordinated by the Mississippi River Water Quality Specialist in La Crosse following general program guidance prepared by the Watershed Management and Fisheries Management Bureaus.

Cross-Resource Monitoring:Streams 3rd order or higher are monitored under this program. These streams are most likely to receive full body contact recreational use, have a WPDES discharge, and provide at least some information as down gradient indicators of water quality for smaller headwater streams.

Groundwater: Implementation of the Clean Water Act (CWA), Wisconsin’s Groundwater Law (Chapter 160 Wisconsin Statutes) and recently enacted Water Quantity legislation (2003 Act 310) all require an understanding of groundwater systems that involves monitoring.

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Contact

For more information contact:

Kristi Minahan
Watershed Management