In this article of Streamside, Swanson explains how the organization has come to use data-driven solutions to protect and restore freshwater ecosystems.

You may not expect …

words like economics, science, technology, analytics, tools and insight from a traditional environmental nonprofit.

So how did the first wild fish conservation group in the Pacific Northwest infuse them into not only a vocabulary, but a mission to protect and restore freshwater?

We changed as the world changed.

The 21st century allows for data to be collected on our every action and used by a multitude of sectors to best direct effort and resources. The Freshwater Trust understood a failure to do the same for water was more than a missed opportunity.

Of the 71% of water on Earth, less than 2% is fresh and accessible. The demands being placed on this nonrenewable, scarce resource are intense and only growing. By 2050, nearly 9.6 billion people and every economic sector will soon be relying on the same waning resource.

If the problem is that powerful and pervasive, the solutions must be equally powerful, holistic, and integrated.

In the early 2000s, we realized how existing data and new technology could be harnessed and applied to inefficiencies and hindrances made intimately familiar to us after decades in conservation.

Not surprisingly, pictures of our water problems were sharpened. More strategic, targeted solutions were made real. It was evident that a viable plan for solving the freshwater crisis nationwide could not be written or executed upon in the absence of harnessing data and insight. We acted accordingly.

Data vs. Insight

To understand these two, know this: They are inexorably linked. One isn’t meaningful or actionable without the other.

Our work at The Freshwater Trust is to bridge them.

Data are facts. Measurements. Individual pieces of information. As President Joe Whitworth writes in his book, “Quantified,” humans create 2.5 quintillion new bytes of data every single day. If each byte were a penny, that’s enough pennies to cover the surface of the Earth five times over.

Yet on their own, these data don’t say much.

Through analysis, we can translate this information to insight. And with insight, we can make informed decisions on how to best improve our freshwater ecosystems.

Insight in practice

Between 2012 and 2015, The Freshwater Trust developed BasinScout. This is a mapping and prioritization methodology that takes sets of publicly available data in a river basin, aggregates them, and discerns where restoration and conservation actions will have the greatest impact.

Data points such as streamside vegetation, solar radiation, slope of the land, soil type, type of crop grown, water usage, and number of livestock raised are the inputs. The output is a map of a basin where land is color-coded as high, medium, or low priority.