Overview

The Center for Watershed Science and Education supports watershed understanding and stewardship across and beyond the state of Wisconsin. The center includes specialists with expertise in groundwater, lakes, streams, water chemistry and analysis and data science.

The center helps individuals, organizations and private and public water resources professionals understand water quality and quantity in private wells, groundwater, lakes and rivers. Through their programming, center staff provide guidance on sampling and data collection, education on water quantity and quality, and interpretation and evaluation of monitoring results. For example, in the Drinking Water Education programming for private well owners, water samples collected from private wells are analyzed for a group of water quality measurements. The center then provides educational outreach to well owners to interpret and apply the results.

The center also performs applied research and creates data visualization tools to improve watershed understanding. Current research explores the movement of nitrate-nitrogen in soil and groundwater, the quantity and chemistry of groundwater, changes in lake water quality and the occurrence of pharmaceuticals and new pesticides in the water. One of the center’s data visualization tools is the mapping of more than 100,000 private well analyses in the Wisconsin Well Water Quality Viewer.

The Center for Watershed Science and Education is located within the College of Natural Resources on the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point campus. By involving students in its work, the center also seeks to prepare students to become the next generation of water quality professionals.