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Freshwater Watch Parma

Active Started 2025-01-10 All territory included in Parma municipality 513 views

About

This Citizen Science project, funded under the 2024 "Sustainable Communities" call by Fondazione Cariparma, aims to engage citizens, institutions, businesses, and farmers in monitoring and protecting the surface waters of the Municipality of Parma. The project involves the development of a monthly water monitoring plan at approximately 30 sites, 100 measurements based on citizen reports, two water blitz events, conferences, photography exhibitions, and documentary screenings.  FWW directly engages various citizen and local stakeholders through its diverse network of project partners: over 16 associations and informal groups, the University of Parma, an international advisor (EarthWatch Europe), the CIRF (Italian National Institute for Research on Water), and ISPRA (Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection).

Aim

Parma boasts an incredible wealth of water and aquatic ecosystems. Just think of the Parma River, which so strongly characterizes our city, the areas of springs and fountains, and the dense network of irrigation canals that are essential to our agriculture and biodiversity.

This wealth, however, is subject to significant negative anthropogenic impacts. It is therefore urgent to implement actions to address these critical issues in order to preserve the benefits this water resource provides to the area, halt the loss of biodiversity, and mitigate the impacts of climate change and extreme events. We believed a project was necessary that would involve citizens, institutions, businesses, and farmers in understanding the critical issues and the

valuable elements, so that together we could identify targeted solutions to reduce pollution and protect and enhance aquatic ecosystems.

The project aim also includes educational activities for schools, developed within the context of the BenEssere in Natura project, with specific topics dedicated to water.

How to participate

Anyone wishing to participate in the monitoring as a citizen scientist or school teachers interested in launching educational programs on the topic can write to Parma Sostenibile at: fwwparma@parmasostenibile.it 

Impact and insights

The project involves over 40 citizens at 42 sites each month, and involved over 300 citizens in the October Water Blitz. The over 400 samples collected from dozens of water bodies during the first six months highlight how, even in Parma, there are critical situations of excess nutrients that need to be adequately addressed. keep going with monitoring and scaling up the involvement of local authorities like local environmental agency etc high interest and involvement of citizens and the high number of monitored stations

Organisations

Project data

No published data has been added to this project yet.