Annual Beaver Lake Volunteer Day Event: September 29th, 2025 Register Now
StreamSmart is a volunteer water quality monitoring program in the Beaver Reservoir Watershed in Northwest Arkansas. Started in 2012, the program trains volunteers to collect water samples and site information 4 times a year, during March, June, September, and December.
The samples our StreamSmart volunteers collect are sent to a certified lab for analysis, and that data tells us a story of changes in water quality over time. This story helps us plan our goals for future projects. Our StreamSmart volunteers are vital for creating this long-term database for tributary stream sites in the Beaver Lake Watershed.Through this program, we aim to engage with citizen scientists and volunteers, increase public awareness about the current quality of our waterways, identify potential trends over time, and provide high-quality data for water resource managers.
This program is funded by Beaver Water District.
Volunteers take notes about their site, record air temperature, water temperature, and take pictures during each monitoring period. Then they collect water samples at their stream site, and deliver the samples to the Arkansas Water Resources Center Water Quality Lab, where they are analyzed for the following parameters:
In May and August, volunteers also get to collect and identify macroinvertebrates. Macroinvertebrates, or “aquatic bugs,” can be excellent indicators of water quality—and they’re fun to collect and identify!
Volunteers monitor sites in March, June, September, and December. Monitoring takes place during the first ten days of the month, since it’s important for all site samples to be taken around the same time, and under the same weather conditions.
We’d love to have you join us! StreamSmart is designed for adult volunteers and high school students who are supervised by adults. All volunteers receive training and usually are paired with an experienced team.
Our volunteers are friendly, passionate about the outdoors, and love sharing that passion with others! We have several sites that need volunteers. Contact us for more information, or to join the program!
We need volunteers at the following monitoring sites:
