2023 Pilot study

Pesticide Watch had an amazing uptake for its first year, with nearly 100 sites joining the sampling effort. Nearly 400 monthly samples were collected between the months of March and October, arriving from sites stretching across eastern Australia right from Queensland down to Southern Tasmania. There were a wide range of participating groups — primary and secondary schools (including River Detectives
Schools), Landcare, WaterWatch, Catchment Management Authorities, private industry, as well as independent samplers who just wanted to give it a go. The rivers, creeks, and lakes that you sampled come from a range of urban, agricultural, and wilderness areas, a diversity of land uses which will be used to generate really interesting data.

The sampling protocol was performed using bespoke sampling kits made especially for Pesticide Watch community scientists. They were designed to collect a clean, filtered 40 mL sample which could be safely frozen and shipped to our mass spectrometry lab at Deakin Burwood.

This pilot study showed us that a community approach to pesticide monitoring of streams is viable at a large scale. Based on this, we have launched Pesticide Watch at a national scale with improved methodologies, detection limits, and community engagement. Below are some of the pilot study findings, which give us early indications of what we might expect to see in our 2024-25 sampling campaign.