Research: SBMC

The Saginaw Bay Monitoring Consortium (SBMC) seeks to establish a coordinated and comprehensive water quality monitoring system and associated tools and resources for the watershed. This will help us understand water quality trends over time, including the impacts of changes in agricultural practices in the watershed. It will contribute to an important scientific knowledge base and improved information flow to stakeholders, and ultimately help inform decision-making and best practices around restoration and resource management, such as:

• Actions to reduce significant environmental damage (i.e. Beneficial Use Impairments) in the Saginaw Bay “Area of Concern.”
• Targets for reducing nutrient levels in Saginaw Bay, under Annex 4 of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.
• Watershed restoration and management decision-making by watershed groups and municipal stormwater managers.

Monitoring activities include weekly sampling at 18 tributary sites within the Saginaw Bay Watershed that are co-located with USGS gaging stations, and 10 open water sites monitored by NOAA GLERL. Tributary samples are analyzed for on-site parameters including pH, dissolved oxygen, temperature, turbidity, and conductivity, and for nutrients and total suspended solids.