Futaleufú Riverkeeper and Community-Based Water Quality Monitoring Programs

March 28, 2025

Fresh water is the most valuable resource for life. However, in Chile it has been poorly managed for decades. Add the negative impact of climate change, and that has put water resource management in jeopardy and has raised challenges and concerns about its conservation.

Community monitoring of water quality is presented as a solution to the lack of institutional scientific data, raising public awareness about the existing problems of water quality and management in the area and creating the basis for sustainable community management.

The Futaleufú Water Monitoring Program is a community science initiative managed and coordinated by Futaleufú Riverkeeper that began in February 2020 and continues to this day. Recently, it has included the Argentinian side of the watershed, and the river mouth that connects the Futaleufu watershed with the Pacific Ocean. This makes the program the first binational community-based water monitoring program in Chile.

Goals:

1. Establish a baseline for water quality in the main water bodies of Futaleufú.
2. Cultivate a community of involved and empowered monitors for the defense of rivers. 
3. Create a repository of hydrochemical data that can be used to inform and support local policy and management. 

Advances: 

1. Collection of water quality data on physical-chemical parameters uninterrupted for 5 years. 
2. Community monitoring in 21 sites in the basin: Including the Futaleufu watershed in both Chile and Argentina plus the river mouth in the Pacific Ocean.
3. More than 20 volunteer monitors, trained by Futaleufú Riverkeeper.
4. Definition of 7 parameters measured based on their importance and feasibility: pH, temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, alkalinity, hardness and turbidity.
5. Systemization and analysis of the physicochemical results collected at the 21 monitoring sites of the Futaleufú program. 
6. Agreement between schools and organizations in both Chile and Argentina to carry out a systematic and unified method in monitoring water quality.
7. Alliance with Scientific Research Centers in Chile and Argentina for support and data analysis validation.
8. Incorporation of biological monitoring of rivers through the identification of macroinvertebrates.

The program conducts monthly water quality monitoring at 21 sites in the Futaleufú River basin.

The sites were chosen based on a combination of hydrological and social factors. We prioritized the selection of sites with a high probability of being impacted by human activity, that represent a range of different geographic and ecological values of the basin, and that have safe, public access roads for volunteer monitors.

Support Futaleufú Riverkeeper in this work by making your tax-deductible donation today.