Rivanna River Basin Commission Meeting   2/28/2023

We are just going to give it two more minutes here for a few more folks to join in and then we will get started.

Thank you all so much for being here.

All righty, it looks like the admitting has started to trickle down, so I think we are safe to get started.

Just for those who just joined the meeting, heads up, the meeting is being recorded, and it will be posted online so that you can access the materials at a later date if you need to, or share it with other people that are a part of your staff.

But welcome, welcome to today's virtual kickoff of STU-MAP in the Thomas Jefferson Planning District.

I am really excited to announce the initiation of this project and really hope that this meeting serves to get you excited about this new community engagement initiative in the greater Charlottesville area.

And just to clarify the geographic scope of this project, it includes all of the jurisdictions that make up the Thomas Jefferson Planning District, which includes the city of Charlottesville,

and then the counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson.

And the Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project, or as I like to call it, StewMap, TJPDC, is an initiative based off of highly successful USDA Forest Service Research Program that works to connect many groups and community organizations that serve as environmental stewards in a given landscape or region.

And the main goal of this project is to help facilitate partnerships between the region's stewardship groups and organizations based on their stewardship focus, as well as the sites that they work on.

This effort, which we will introduce in more detail shortly with a few different speakers, so it's not just me talking at you, is an opportunity for you, the larger community,

to partner with USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, and the Thomas Jefferson Planning District to develop a publicly accessible database, partnership mapping tool, and to serve as the latest component of a larger stew map network that's really across the globe now.

We join New York City, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Chicago, and others as we lead the nation in bringing geographic based social networking to our local watershed, the urban forest, and the landscapes that make up the district here.

So moving forward, just a brief tech overview.

Feel free to have your cameras on during this portion of the meeting.

But right now we're going to keep everyone muted until about the last 10 to 15 minutes where you'll have the option to provide any feedback on the project after you have a little bit more background information and ask any questions that you may have related to the project.

As we go, feel free to pop in any questions you may have into the chat and we'll make sure to address those by the end of the meeting.

Just to overview the agenda briefly.

We're already into the welcome and introduction.

You're going to hear from a few more people on the project team, as well as Michelle Johnson, who has joined us from the US Forest Service to share more about the STU-MAP project and framework and ways it's been implemented in other areas and what you can learn from being a part of this project.

And then we're going to go over an overview of the survey that organizations will be taking

and move into discussion related to the survey.

So you'll see sort of the sections of the survey, the types of questions that are a part of each section.

And then hopefully any questions you can have can be shared after that.

Okay.

And then just sort of setting context before we get into more presentations here, why the TJPDC is interested in taking this on.

And so broadly, the TJPDC is a district that spans beyond our urban boundaries.

So we're going to have the rural localities that are also intertwined with this project, which is different than many of other student projects, although some now have

have really taken on a large geographic context.

But then also it aligns with the larger goals of the Thomas Jefferson Cleaning District Commission to learn from our partnerships with our counties and our partners and nonprofit organizations, neighborhood organizations.

But the TJPDC really works to support its localities and the public through planning, technical assistance, data gathering, grant administration services.

And two of our programs at the TJPDC really aligned with the goals and intentions of STUMAP and those being the Rivanna River Basin Commission, which values are listed here on the screen.

But really, they work to

Foster resource stewardship for the environmental and economic health of the Rivanna Basin and they're hosting this meeting today supplying a forum for communication coordination and education around solutions to the watershed and the larger environment here in the river basin and then additionally the larger program

is the watershed implementation plan, which is a larger collaborative effort to support green infrastructure solutions and reduce water pollution in the local region here and then the larger Chesapeake Bay.

So we have Jake Klein here, who is the statewide watershed outreach coordinator for the DEQ part of the watershed implementation plan.

Thanks, Jake.

Again, thank you.

I am really excited to see TJPDC undertake this STU-Mapping effort because one of our goals at DEQ is to see a greater

I'll say facilitation of partners within each of the planning district commission regions.

And so we here at DEQ partner with the Chesapeake Bay PDCs of which there are 15 and more frequently as of late, we have been pushing them to

really try and find and identify those project partners within their area that would be helpful to partner with especially as it relates to best management practice implementation or BMPs.

Really we are really encouraging greater BMP implementation across the Bay watershed and we see greater partner facilitation as a really big foundational driver of how to get BMPs in the ground.

and so for this STU-MAP effort which of course brings together these partners and identifies not only within the region where they're located but also what sort of goals and efforts they are undertaking I think is a really great identifier tool to help

recognize okay well maybe we can do BMPs over in this area or you know this area seems to be a really great place for you know these specific BMP types so we see it as a way that you know you're bringing a lot of different voices to the table in a way that will help to increase the facilitation of BMP implementation.

and so of course you see it on the screen here that brings in not only the partners piece and the regional scope but environmental justice as well and I would really emphasize reaching out to the DEQ Environmental Justice Coordinator for your region and that information can be found on DEQ's website

But just overall, you know, thanks for including me on this call.

I'm excited to learn more about this effort and how it relates to TJPDC's goals.

And I stand to help offer any sort of clarification, help answer any questions that you may have.

Thanks for that perspective, Jake, and for your help with the program.

But like you mentioned, this does help support green infrastructure.

And we're taking that kind of lens and asking, I think it's one to two questions that are kind of catered to that.

But this also aligns with our larger goals to support environmental stewardship as it's defined by the US Forest Service, which Michelle will share a little bit more detailed information about the definition that we're working here through the scope.

And part of what the beauty of this project is as well is that by understanding the geographic turf of the different environmental stewards that work in the region and mapping that, you begin to be able to see where there's gaps.

So maybe there's not monitoring of water quality in this one area or there's not

education about infrastructure that can be implemented in a certain area.

So you can begin to build partnership and bridge gaps and portions of the community that maybe are less served.

Hi, my name is Ruth Emerick.

I am the Chief Operating Officer for the TJPDC.

My background though is in GIS and mapping.

For this project, I will be helping oversee the survey and the responses as they come in.

I'll be ensuring that technical aspects of the survey are working properly.

If you have problems with it, please reach out to me directly.

I'll help with the data cleaning before the data gets mapped and I'll help with the final mapping dashboard and visualizations throughout the process.

Thank you, Ruth, for all your help on this project and for being my go-to throughout the process with their data management and GIS expertise.

And just a little bit more about me, although I've been talking at you, I've been a part of this community all my life.

I grew up in Fluvanna County and studied environmental science at UVA, working alongside a few of the stewards that are represented here.

And my main

My main goal in this project is to coordinate the project, manage outreach.

I've been working to develop the survey and then I'll also be supporting data cleaning and then sharing results with you all once the results come in.

Now I'm going to pass it over to Michelle Johnson, who can share her screen.

And she is part of the Forest Service at the Northern Research Station in New York City, who's a part of the team who developed STU-MAP.

And she'll share more about how the project defines stewardship, the overall process, and take a look at how the project is visualized and implemented in other areas.

Great.

Thank you, Bella.

Just give me a minute.

to share my screen.

OK, great.

Thanks, everyone.

Today, I'm just going to give you a hopefully brief overview of StreamWatch and kind of our work to date.

And we're really excited to have this new

Example happening in Virginia in the Charlottesville area and looking forward to working with Bella, Ruth, and others.

So kind of the impetus for STUMAP in the first place was the Forest Service does a lot of monitoring of the resource of, you know, the forest of trees and the like.

And we have, for example, Forest Inventory and Analysis Program.

And we're also interested in understanding the social aspects, who is taking care of these places, but do it in a way that we can replicate and examine change over time of the social aspects of the system in addition to the more biophysical aspects of things.

And so that was the impetus starting back in 2007 in New York City.

And we, as a group here in New York City, I'm part of the New York City Urban Field Station, along with my colleagues, Lindsay and Erica, that were listed on the previous slide.

We define stewardship kind of as a set of actions, and this is really kind of a programmatic sort of definition.

There's many other ways to think about the role of care.

and maybe more emotional aspects as well, but we're really focusing on what are people doing at a group level.

And so we think about things like management, conservation, monitoring, transforming systems like waste systems or energy systems, advocacy and education.

And those are the type of different stewardship actions or categories we are interested in understanding how groups are working to take care of place.

And so by collecting data through the Zoom app survey, you can start learning some answers to questions like these.

Who's participating in taking care of place?

How are they participating?

What kind of actions are they doing?

Where is it that they're working?

You know, across space, the terfs that Bella mentioned.

What's their effect on both the environment and communities?

We have a few questions on the survey that relate to

outcomes.

And so starting digging into, you know, what's the effect on social systems, on trust, on community participation, as well as habitat quality and air and water quality.

And then we can also look at those gaps in the landscape that Bella talked about, you know, where might we have more or fewer groups working or larger or smaller levels of capacity to take care of place.

And so our approach is, we've talked about a survey so far that results in a database that's both a map and social networks.

We often follow it up with interviews.

That's just sort of an optional thing to take a deeper dive to understand more of the maybe origin stories of groups or how change has occurred over time.

And what the survey and the interviews do is looking at how are groups working, where are they working, and who they're working with, and then why are they engaged in this activity?

We ask questions like, what's the mission of your group?

We're in more than 15 locations.

Bella mentioned a few of those, and I'm excited to have the Thomas Jefferson District be the next, so we can say more than 16 now.

These are examples of the questions on the survey that I know Bella and others are going to walk you through after this presentation, but basically three types of questions, organizational data, geographic data, and network data.

So some basic information about the group, then asking for definitions and drawing boundaries, where do you work?

And then asking, who do you work with?

And from that, you're able to draw a network map.

We often, I don't have this in the slide deck, but it's maybe something we can we can talk about in the Q&A section is just like, who are we sending the survey to?

And how do you build that list?

Oftentimes, we build the list starting from registered nonprofits, ask, you know, kind of organizations that are in the area, hey, do you have mailing lists and kind of gather together so that the most groups

that you might think might be engaging in stewardship in some way, receive the survey and are able to take the survey so that everybody has the opportunity to get on the map.

The results of the map, if a group says yes to a question, yes, I want to be on the public map, they're included on any of the data visualizations I'll show you.

If they say no, then that stays just with the small team that's collecting the data.

And that can be used for kind of like summaries, things that don't identify the group.

You know, so you could say, you know, there's 100 groups out here that took the survey, but you might not name this particular group, you know, specific details about where they work or who they work with, things like that.

I'm going to talk now sort of jumping to the results.

We talked about some of the gaps and overlaps by looking at where groups are working, whether or not working.

You can also look at individual group organizational capacity.

Here's an example on the left of the Regional Plan Association.

which is kind of similar to the Thomas Jefferson Planning District for the larger New York City metro area.

They work in the whole metro region and their primary focus is advocacy and focusing on community improvement and capacity building through planning.

And so you can kind of get information specifically about that group and then put that data in conversation with the other groups.

Where in space are they working?

So we can start seeing these,

Larger citywide groups and then the more specific groups that are focused maybe on a single community garden or a single park or set of trees.

From the network data, you can start, this is an example from our Bridger-Tecon National Forest out in Wyoming.

Asking those questions, who do groups work with?

You can make a diagram like this and then you can kind of use it to identify who's the most named groups.

Who is everybody else identifying as working with?

And so these are some examples.

They're both government agencies, but also nonprofits and civic groups in the region that are the most kind of named and networked.

of the larger system.

You can also use a network like FIST.

So let me just give the example of the Forest Service that's in the middle of the diagram.

There are groups out on the edge that aren't directly connected to the Forest Service.

So if the Forest Service wanted to increase the partnerships in that area, they might go, who are these other groups we don't know about?

Let's start working with them.

And so that's where these maps can really come in handy is identifying not just who do you work with, but who are your partners working with?

And then we can also turn all this information into some different dashboards, story maps, diagrams, and we make the public data set publicly available is normally how we do it.

So someone that has the GIS skills like Ruth can download the data anywhere in your area and say, I wanna pull it into my own system in addition to coming to your website and the Forest Service website as well and looking at the public viewable

interactive maps.

So a few examples of just how people are using the data.

One is in New York City, we had a program a while back a couple mayors ago called Million Trees NYC.

And, you know, a million trees were planted within eight years in the city.

and involved a lot of work with local groups.

And so to plant that many trees, Parks Department wasn't gonna do it alone.

They also wanted to work with community groups to sort of reinforce the importance of these places and later stewarding and maintaining these trees.

So they engaged in reaching out to different civic groups

to say, hey, help us coordinate and get people out to join these events for tree planting.

And so the STU-MAP data could be a resource and were a resource to sort of identify some of those groups in a particular neighborhood where they were going to do a planting event.

And we have done the STU-MAP in Baltimore, which is closer to you guys.

And there, some of the social network data have been leveraged for more effective funding.

So thinking about not just collaborative networks, but funding networks and how can knowing about these social networks a little more enable more successful grant application and the more collaborative work to harness grant dollars.

Here's that larger community of practice that Bella was mentioning, the more than 15, now 16 locations.

We'll have to add Charlottesville area to the map going forward.

But here's where we have currently and folks that are engaged in these efforts are part of our community practice.

So we have kind of regular meetings.

to sort of talk about what it is, but also the larger questions of, you know, what do you do once the data are collected?

Are there some other aspects of stewardship maybe we wanna bring into projects like these?

The list is kind of wide open about that community.

And I think I'll end there.

I will try and drop these links here into the chat as well so you guys can directly link.

And I'll also include a link to our latest

StoryMap so you can get an idea of the visualizations that will be coming down the line from your survey there in Virginia.

Thank you so much, Michelle.

OK, lovely.

Let me return to screen sharing.

So hopefully now everybody has a better understanding of what StewMap is.

And it really, again, just broadly, it's a survey and public database designed to help map our stewardship activities and the networks with the goal of strengthening community capacity in the region.

And I just wanted to touch upon what types of questions again this can answer for you.

I know Michelle briefly touched upon this but there's other tangential questions as well like what are others doing in the region?

What are those opportunities for collaboration?

What are the gaps and concentrations of care?

And

How can we build out collaboration and partnership, which is really what STU-MAP is all about, understanding those environmental stewards and supporting them.

Because many of our environmental groups are absolutely vital to the health and well-being of our community, but

Some of those organizations that maybe aren't the larger nonprofits, but the neighborhood groups or smaller civic organizations, their activities often can go unnoticed or they're undervalued or people in the community just aren't aware of what they can go to that organization for.

So this is really a process to help alleviate that and overcome that issue to show the many ways that people can reach out to

the environmental stewards that act within their region and just to expand upon again the benefits to what this project can bring to our region we're working to increase collaboration amongst the environmental stewards so that they are aware of ways that they can share information across the community share ideas

Other resources that might be valuable to their group, other nonprofits or local and state agencies and county governments.

Support community capacity to learn from other experts and identify those experts and help develop stronger funding proposals, as Michelle had mentioned, with a lot of funding available through the IIJA.

And then

Visualized our regional stewardship to really celebrate those stewards that work within the region and the type of work that they're doing.

And this can serve as an outward cue to our community of our caring concern for the environment and work to catalyze change and investment by internal investors as well as external forces of the community.

Briefly, just to show you the timeline of our process here that hopefully your organizations will be a part of.

In March, we are going to do outreach to you all and many other environmental stewards in the region.

And so this is a smaller group here.

It doesn't consist of our entire list of environmental stewards, but we wanted to keep it smaller to kind of serve as a opportunity to really engage in more in-depth conversation.

As well as to get the word out to you, Michelle mentioned,

sharing a little bit more about how we're gathering information about who those environmental stewards are in the region and then conducting outreach.

And so we began the process and looking at who are those nonprofit groups that are listed online in the region, looking at our existing partnership network,

Reaching out to partners to share information about their partners and who they work with and then also looking to social media because the algorithms now really help to kind of connect who's working with who and build out that list.

but I just want to mention that March is when the survey will first be released and it will be open for a few months but I just wanted to emphasize that filling the survey out sooner rather than later really helps make this database be as representative as possible of the stewards in the region because as you fill it out you let us know about your network and then we're able to reach out to your network

to see if they're interested in being a part of the survey and public database because we'd like every organization that's interested and within the scope to be represented on the map.

And so from April to May and really June when the survey will close, we'll be doing a few different times of outreach through email, phone calls,

So please be responsive as the research team reaches out to you.

And then after the survey closes, we will cream and analyze those responses.

And just a note, I know that for

larger organizations who may be like, for example, a county government who has their parks and rec staff, erosion and sediment control, potentially environmental protection, discussing within your groups who may be the best person to represent your entire organization, or if breaking it down by department is what works best because that's where the knowledge lies, there are ways that we can merge the data

across the parliamentally afterwards.

So making sure that you have the right person to kind of represent you and your organization through the survey.

And then later in the year, we will publish the results that will be publicly available to you all, as well as the rest of the community with, of course, your permission that you would like to be visualized on the survey.

And so now going into a little bit more of the details of the survey itself.

So our survey is based off of the Northern Research Station's STU-MAP.

They have an approved survey by the Office of Management and Budget.

That was kind of the streamlined one that many different stewardship communities can go to to start their project.

We rely heavily on that one, but then also look to other areas.

For example, the Southeast New England project, which was recently done from 2020 to 2022, also had kind of the green infrastructure lens.

So looking to them as well to kind of help mark some of the characteristics of our region and our program goals within the landscape.

And

We're still additionally encompassing that larger definition of environmental stewardship, whether it be air, forest, water quality, and anything else defined there.

And so for the different sections of the survey, starting out, the contact information is just going to be you and the person that's going to be the contact for your organization.

And then the second section will just be a little bit more contact information really about the group as a whole.

So what's your group's email?

How can the community reach out to you to contact you?

And then you're just going to identify what your primary stewardship activity is, whether that's advocating for the environment, conserving a certain aspect, managing, transforming,

And then in third section, for more general stewardship information, this is going to be more specific questions related to your group's work and the mission as it relates to environmental stewardship.

And many of these questions throughout the whole survey are going to be check boxes.

So it's not going to be something that you have to write in every response.

It's as streamlined as possible for really ease of use.

I went through the draft survey myself and it took me about 15 minutes, but I said 20 to 30, because I know this is a time commitment.

It might take a little bit more time, especially if you have to

coordinate with others that might be working in your organization.

And then next is the geographic area, so where your group works.

And for this, there's a few different options for how you can put in this information.

And the first one, the most ideal one being that you use the mapping tool that's embedded in the survey.

So you'll actually be able to kind of click and demarcate based on a map of

the TJPDC, where it is you're working, whether that be in parks across the region, the watershed as a whole.

But for some organizations, it might make more sense to just list that as a text entry.

So if you're working, let's say for Albemarle County and you work across the entire county, you can just write that in.

We work across that entire area so that you don't have to kind of demarcate everything with the lines.

The final option is if your organization has GIS data about where you do work already housed, you can just reach out to Ruth or me and we'll be able to put that information into the final database.

And then the fifth section is more information about the stewardship activities.

So that's going to be a little bit more specific based on the sites and systems or types of interventions that your group might work on.

So do you work on public access and trails?

Do you work around extreme banks?

Are you working in community gardens or public parks, in neighborhoods, things along those lines?

And then

or six on the group characteristics.

That's going to be the more specific questions on your staff time, volunteers, how many volunteers, how many volunteer hours, budget questions related to your organizations to understand what's the community capacity for environmental work.

And then for the organizational services, what specific services do you provide at your organization and what services are you seeking?

So that kind of ranges from education to technical assistance to grants or help with outreach or doing the outreach yourselves.

And then asking about how you share your information with the public.

And then eight is really that section about your stewardship network and who are your partners, who do you go to for data, knowledge and expertise, and who are your other regular collaborators around the topic of environmental stewardship.

And then in nine, it's an opportunity for you to share what your goals are through the stewardship process.

And if you do any tracking of your progress, such as the amount of trees planted, the amount of pollution reduction, and again, a way to help see what work's being done, celebrate the work that is already being done and understand where there's room for more.

And in the final section, that's just really an open-ended optional

all of it's optional, but optional part where you can share any questions that you may have, any feedback related to the survey or anything else about your group that you might find applicable.

And I am available at any time throughout the process.

I'll be sure to pop my email in the chat, but I'm sure you've gotten a few from me already.

If you have any questions related to the survey or the process as you work through it.

And then just to give you all a few tips as your organization works through the survey that will be released next month.

I just wanted to say that one, don't get too hung up on any specific question.

For example, the one about volunteer hours.

I could understand how some people might feel bogged down and want to have an exact number of hours and do the research, but just try to do your best to be representative of your organization while

We don't want this to be too much of a burden for you.

If it's accessible, it's accessible.

If it's not, just do your best to estimate for your organization.

I will also recommend completing the survey in just one sitting based on other areas and what they found in doing this process.

Because it's online and in ArcGIS, there's not really a good way for you to save your responses.

So just filling it out in that one iteration and sending it in will be the best way to make sure that you don't lose any work and don't have to kind of double track.

And then based on, I guess I shared a bit about the interactive mapping section, but there are a few different approaches there catered to your geographic extent.

So just try to think through based on what your area is, what might be best there.

But again, having the mapping done

through the tool in the survey would be the best number one response way.

And then finally, for the networks, I know many organizations are going to have very large networks, but just focusing on those most important or most day to day partners that you're working with.

And I just, yeah, this is I guess a good way to kind of contextualize for you all as you're beginning this survey is kind of what makes this local environment, this local watershed, the local forest and surrounding landscapes important to you as an individual and your organization.

And think about how your response describes the mission and the vision of your organization and as it relates to environmental stewardship.

So maybe not 100% of what you do is dedicated to environmental stewardship, but that maybe 15% is something that's definitely worth celebrating and acknowledging.

And yeah, again, please feel free to reach out with any

Comments or technical questions you might have along the way.

We're really excited for your participation and so we're here to help make it as easy as possible for you to complete it.

And looks like we are now to the discussion portion.

I will check the chat now to see if there's any questions.

Okay, I see.

But feel free to pop in and ask any questions now.

So I see a question in the chat now about sharing the survey questions in advance.

And absolutely.

So the survey is going to be open for a few months.

So I think there will be time to kind of discuss internally.

It will be best and it'll all be available online.

I can also share the paper version as well.

No problem at all.

I'll go ahead and a few questions came in sort of before and along the way as we've been talking through this process and I can just share the feedback from those now in case I could see any juices flowing but there were questions related to how this can help address

diversity, equity, and inclusion, and more about environmental justice.

And there are no questions specifically that are related to directly environmental justice, but this does serve to help understand kind of the landscape of environmental justice, because we're able to understand where there might be gaps in the community, where we can better target outreach

and where certain topics.

We've got a raised hand from Michelle.

Yeah, I was just going to add a little bit to that based on that question.

We're starting to highlight some new questions that are asking more around the demographics of board members, whether an organization is BIPOC led or woman led, and then

A few other questions around does your organization have a DEIJ plan, things like that.

If you'd like to include those, we can definitely share those with you.

And I think we've been kind of developing those concurrently with you guys starting the process.

Yeah, absolutely.

Environmental justice is one of the kind of big talking points and initiatives that we're trying to learn how we can best support others in addressing environmental justice.

To piggyback on that point, something that could be helpful in the context of what Bella and Michelle were just discussing is really thinking about outreach and making sure that organizations, maybe for whom environmental stewardship is not their kind of primary mission, but who may be serving the community in other ways and are doing some work that intersects with environmental stewardship, that those organizations are also

answering the survey or that there's outreach to invite them to answer the survey, because there could be community-based organizations that are serving BIPOC sub-communities within our broader areas.

And maybe they don't see themselves as first and foremost focused on environmental work, but they're doing environmental stewardship as part of other kinds of activities associated with maybe what their primary mission is.

Absolutely.

That's definitely part of what student map hopes to encompass.

One question's like, what percentage of your work is related to environmental stewardship?

So it's like zero to 19% all the way to 100.

And so we're definitely working to encompass that, but this might be a good opportunity here for ideas about which types of organizations might kind of stand that reach.

Like for example, schools.

One that came to mind while there's a lot of other topics that they're addressing environmental education is another aspect that and sometimes even community projects as well.

And HOAs a lot of times have been encompassed in different stream map iterations.

But if anybody has ideas about different groups in the community, feel free to drop those in the chat or call them out.

or email me at a later date because we're definitely looking to, again, build out this database to be as representative as possible.

So if you have mailing lists, partners in mind with contact information, feel free to shoot me an email with that information so that this can really serve the community as best as possible.

Regulating, I would say definitely counts as stewardship.

Yeah, we built the survey primarily for civic organizations, but we also have extended it so that businesses and government can take it as well.

So I think the categories, we never really have regulation like clearly built in, but I think you could see where it could fit in maybe with conservation, which often I think of as like land protection or protection actions.

and the role of regulation in engaging and protection.

You could build it into your definition where you see it, or you could also consider adding it as an additional category if you want to.

We do try and keep the survey relatively comparable between locations.

So maybe I wanna think a little further, adding a new category would allow us to still compare.

or to clearly have that as part of the definition of one of the other categories may work.

I wanted to go back to, I think it was maybe it was Gabe that was mentioning a comment about making sure that folks saw themselves as stewards.

And I think that that's something to really consider with the recruitment text that will accompany the email

or if you have any other you know however you're planning to send out the survey you know we in New York City have used like get on the map and then also are you a steward and have like a lot of different examples and that they're not

Often, like you were saying, groups might be in that zero or one to 19% category.

We want to capture those groups that maybe they're a youth group, but they also do a trash cleanup in front of their building once a year or something.

Those are stewards, and we want to make sure they're on the map.

Absolutely, thanks for that perspective.

And I know that different areas have kind of had different focuses on whether they're just trying to encompass the civic organizations or if they are taking that broader lens of nonprofits and government.

And for our region, just with the population size that it is compared to those larger cities, I think we have the opportunity here and we're taking advantage of that,

Definitely including the government organizations and the nonprofit organizations as well as the neighborhood organizations and civic groups that also help to support

Stewardship activities in the region.

Because as we know, I mean, it really does take a partnership.

I'm not seeing any raised hands or any questions, but feel free to give me a call or email me with any questions you may have and I'll follow up with the presentation materials and the link to the website so you can receive any updates that will come as we move through the process and move forward with StreamWatch.

Thank you all so much.

Have a great day.

Thank you, Bella.