Entomologist John Lee teaches students about monitoring insects. Salmon River Restoration Council .

With tight budgets at both the State and Federal level, there is often less agency staff time devoted to monitoring aquatic resources. Volunteer monitoring by citizens, however, is contributing useful data. High quality results from such efforts can be put into KRIS projects, allowing volunteers to easily update, display and share this information.

• Salmon River Restoration Council: SRRC combined paid staff time with student volunteers and their families to place automated temperature sensors to better understand their river and its health. SRRC also co-hosts an annual spring chinook salmon dive with volunteers and contributes to the updating of KRIS.
• Mattole Restoration Council: KRIS Mattole V 1.0 includes substantial data from the MRC and the Mattole Salmon Group (MSG), which have been collecting information under grants and as volunteers for over 20 years. MRC and MSG are using the KRIS Mattole database to capture and organize data that supports their new restoration plan.
• Russian River First Flush: Dedicated volunteers and agency scientists formed a team in the Russian River where team leaders worked closely with professionals to assure that data collected were all of high quality. Their results are in the Draft KRIS Russian River database.
• Friends of the Garcia River: This group has obtained information such as cross sections, flow and water temperature data that, when used in combination with agency and private company data, show recovery trends in the Garcia River.
• Trout Unlimited: North Coast TU projects have been carried out cooperatively with private timber companies and target coho salmon refuge areas. The TU South Fork Garcia River project with the Mendocino Redwood Company removed all high-risk roads and landings to prevent erosion. Stream data collected by Americorp volunteers and the Mendocino County RCD are being used to evaluate project effectiveness.

Volunteers also benefit greatly from the KRIS' complete system of Helps and Tutorials that allow easy to follow steps for data management, charting for trend monitoring and metadata requirements to meet quality assurance and quality control standards. The KRIS Bibliography allows review of reports and handbooks with field protocols to help standardize methods.