ACSA is thrilled to announce that the 2025 ACSA Seed Grant has been awarded to Brady Hamilton, a graduate researcher in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at Deakin University. The $2,000 grant will go towards “translating community pesticide monitoring data into an open, interactive, and visually effective online tool to increase impact of citizen science data” as part of the Pesticide Watch project.
Pesticide Watch
Brady Hamilton – Deakin University
Pesticide residues are among the greatest drivers of biodiversity loss in aquatic ecosystems, affecting organisms in diverse freshwater environments at all trophic levels. Nearly 1,000 different pesticide active constituents are registered for use in Australia, including many which are banned or restricted overseas due to acute or chronic risk to aquatic fauna and flora. Despite this, Australia lacks a cohesive, large-scale, long-term aquatic pesticide monitoring program, which has led to significant data gaps in the fate of pesticide residues and their likely environmental effects.
In response, Deakin University established Pesticide Watch, a national citizen science program which engages volunteer water quality monitors from organisations including WaterWatch, Landcare, Friends groups and Catchment Management Authorities groups in the collection of monthly water samples for pesticide analyses.
The ambition of our data portal is to enhance community engagement, support effective management, and revitalise storytelling efforts around emerging contaminants. Preliminary insights from our ongoing research into the social context around emerging contaminants in Australia suggests that there are major knowledge gaps as well as significant community concern around the pesticide use and regulation. Having worked with many Australian community groups in sample collection and analysis, Pesticide Watch will be closing the loop with these groups, and we want to translate our data into meaningful and impactful ways which may appeal to a broad range of communities and stakeholder groups to influence real change where it is needed. We hope to learn from, and then model best-practice feedback to citizen scientists from a collaborative monitoring program, and we hope that in effectively communicating our work, we may increase the longevity of our citizen science initiative.
In response, Deakin University established Pesticide Watch, a national citizen science program which engages volunteer water quality monitors from organisations including WaterWatch, Landcare, Friends groups and Catchment Management Authorities groups in the collection of monthly water samples for pesticide analyses.
The ambition of our data portal is to enhance community engagement, support effective management, and revitalise storytelling efforts around emerging contaminants. Preliminary insights from our ongoing research into the social context around emerging contaminants in Australia suggests that there are major knowledge gaps as well as significant community concern around the pesticide use and regulation. Having worked with many Australian community groups in sample collection and analysis, Pesticide Watch will be closing the loop with these groups, and we want to translate our data into meaningful and impactful ways which may appeal to a broad range of communities and stakeholder groups to influence real change where it is needed. We hope to learn from, and then model best-practice feedback to citizen scientists from a collaborative monitoring program, and we hope that in effectively communicating our work, we may increase the longevity of our citizen science initiative.