CSI News and Monthly Updates

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CSI Monthly Updates

We hope you enjoy our monthly updates which include recent news, water monitoring program updates, photographs from our volunteers, and interested articles, webinars, and upcoming water-related events! To receive CSI Updates each month, please click the subscribe button below.

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CSI's March 2026 Update

Spring is underway in the Finger Lakes, bringing renewed energy to our waterways—and to the dedicated community members who help protect them. In this month’s update, we’re excited to share highlights from across our programs, including a new vernal pool monitoring collaboration with Tompkins County Area Partnership (TCAMP), progress in our Biomonitoring Program, and preparations for the upcoming Cayuga Lake HAB Monitoring Program season. Our Synoptic Stream & Lake Monitoring Program also kicked off in March, with volunteers braving high rainfall and challenging conditions to collect critical early-season data. We also take a closer look at ongoing work in the Owego Creek Tributary Monitoring Project, along with recent outreach efforts that continue to connect people with the science and stewardship of their local waters.

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CSI's February 2026 Update

As we move through the winter season, CSI continues to advance collaborative, community-centered water quality work across the region. This month, we’re excited to highlight our new partnership with TCAMP’s (Tompkins County Amphibian Patrol), participation in the first-ever Finger Lakes Advocacy Day, and the successful hosting of the 2026 Data Jam: Investigating Local Water Quality. We’re also sharing updates from the Biomonitoring Program and the Synoptic Stream & Lake Monitoring Program, along with details on upcoming CSI events and recent upgrades to CSI’s Water Quality Database. Finally, we’re pleased to announce new WRFI radio commercials promoting the Water Testing Assistance Program, helping expand access to water testing resources throughout our communities.

January 2026 Update: Winter Work, New Faces, and What’s Ahead

Despite the cold temperatures and snowy start to the year, there has been a flurry of activity this January at CSI. Synoptic Stream and Lake annual team trainings are underway, and BMI volunteers are staying engaged through Open Lab Nights. We’ve kicked off planning for the 2026 HABs monitoring program, made meaningful database upgrades to support our monitoring work, and were glad to connect with colleagues at the Finger Lakes Research Conference. We’re also excited to welcome a new board member, share that hard copies of The Water Bulletin are now available, and look ahead to a busy schedule of upcoming outreach events. Thank you for keeping the momentum going—even in winter weather.

December Updates from CSI: 2025 Water Bulletin, Program Highlights & What’s Ahead

As we close out 2025, we’re pleased to share a season of meaningful progress and momentum at Community Science Institute. Our 2025 Water Bulletin Newsletter is now published, offering insights from a year of community-powered research, while updated water testing prices will take effect in 2026. This month’s update also highlights CSI’s participation in the American Fisheries Society conference, announcements about upcoming public programs, and important end-of-year updates from our Harmful Algal Bloom (HABs), Synoptic, and Biological Monitoring initiatives. Thank you for being part of a growing community committed to science, stewardship, and healthy waters.

November at CSI: Record HAB Findings, Stream Sampling Wrap-Up, and More

As we look back on November, CSI is grateful for a month marked by strong momentum and community engagement. Our annual membership campaign climbed to an exciting 97% of its goal, and we were pleased to welcome a new intern from Ithaca College to the team. November also brought notable field and lab activity: the Cayuga Lake HAB monitoring program documented its latest blooms on record, synoptic stream volunteers were able to complete their final sampling of the year thanks to much-needed late-October and early-November rains, and our Biological Monitoring Program stayed busy with open lab nights to process samples collected earlier in the season. Throughout the month, we continued to accept general public water samples, supporting residents across the region. Thank you for being part of this work as we move into the final stretch of the year.

October Highlights from CSI You Won’t Want to Miss

October was a month of momentum and milestones at Community Science Institute. As autumn colors swept through our watersheds, CSI’s programs continued in full swing with Synoptic Stream and Lake Monitoring and Harmful Algal Bloom monitoring extending into November. We’re excited to share that we’ve reached 83% of our fundraising goal, launched our new Water Testing Assistance Program, welcomed two new team members, and wrapped up this year’s Journey of Water series. Read on for the latest updates from the field, the lab, and our community.

September Monthly Updates

As autumn settles over the Finger Lakes, we’re celebrating a busy and inspiring September at CSI! Thanks to our supporters, we’ve reached 73% of our membership goal, and our volunteers continue to make waves—tracking late-season HABs, sampling streams, and advancing conservation work on Owego Creek. We’ve also been out in the community with presentations and Journey of Water programs that keep curiosity and stewardship flowing. Read on to see what we’ve accomplished together this month!

CSI’s August 2025 Monthly Updates

August has been a month of milestones at CSI! We celebrated our 25th anniversary with a special afternoon of volunteer recognition and a delicious lunch, and our dedicated volunteers kept programs running smoothly by washing sample bottles and assembling field kits. This month also brought updates on harmful algal blooms reported from Cayuga Lake, synoptic stream monitoring events, and biomonitoring sample collection events, while Journey of Water programs and community presentations continue to engage and inspire around the watershed.

CSI’s July 2025 Monthly Updates

July was packed with summer science in action! Our Harmful Algal Bloom (HABs) Harriers began weekly shoreline surveys around Cayuga Lake, helping track a large bloom along the western shore. We also hosted stream monitoring events in the Cayuga and Seneca Lake watersheds, engaging volunteers in hands-on water sampling. In the lab, staff analyzed drinking water for clients and surface water samples from volunteers. Open Plankton Lab Nights invited the community to help identify the microorganisms that call Cayuga Lake home. Meanwhile, local kids and families explored creeks, visited a farm, and toured municipal water treatment facilities. Thank you to everyone who shared their time, energy, and curiosity this month—your efforts are essential to protecting water quality!

CSI’s May & June 2025 Monthly Updates

We’ve had an incredibly active start to the season, and in the rush of fieldwork, lab analyses, and community programs, our monthly update took a short break. We're excited to share a combined May–June edition full of highlights from the past two months. From water quality monitoring to public events and educational outreach, there’s been a lot happening at CSI—and we’re grateful for the support of our partners, volunteers, and community members who make this work possible.

CSI’s April 2025 Monthly Update

In April, CSI continued to build momentum across our programs as we transitioned into the spring monitoring season. Volunteers prepared for upcoming stream and lake sampling events, while our lab team remained busy with sample analysis and open lab nights for macroinvertebrate identification. We also made strides in community outreach by promoting our new Business Membership Program and developing educational materials for the summer. With our Journey of Water program series, harmful algal bloom monitoring, and biomonitoring events on the horizon, April set a strong foundation for an active and impactful season ahead.

CSI’s March 2025 Monthly Update

The month of March gave us the official start to spring and more daylight! With both comes new energy and exciting developments at CSI. As we wrap up winter projects and prepare for the busy field season ahead, we're excited to share updates from our programs, upcoming events, and opportunities to get involved. Read on to see what we’ve been up to this March!

CSI’s February 2025 Monthly Update

February was a cold, frozen month that kept us indoors prepping for our busy season! The waterfalls were frozen in time, ice formed on the shores of the lake, and the snow drifts piled up. Extra increments of daylight became noticeable at the end of the days though, and gave us hope spring would in fact return! By the end of the month temperatures had warmed enough to release the waterfalls and snowpack allowing for our first sampling event of the year to occur. Read on for more updates from CSI!

CSI January 2025 Monthly Update

The CSI staff enjoyed a refreshing winter break as 2024 came to a close and we hit the ground running in 2025! January was a busy month filled with accepting drinking water samples from clients at the lab, hosting Open Lab Nights, collaborating with partner organizations on upcoming projects, and tying up loose ends from the previous year. We also welcomed a new team member and bid farewell to another. Read on for a closer look at what we’ve been up to over the past month!

CSI Nov. & Dec. 2024 Monthly Updates

The end of 2024 has proven to be just as busy as the rest of the year for the CSI staff (which is part of the reason why you're receiving a combined monthly update)! As we compile end of the year reports, review data collected by volunteers, and take in the vast reach that CSI has across the Finger Lakes region (and beyond!) we are truly grateful for the network of dedicated and caring community members involved with CSI. No matter your level of involvement with our organization, we appreciate you being here. We wish you happy and healthy holidays.

CSI October 2024 Monthly Update

October was yet another busy month for CSI staff and volunteers! The sampling and monitoring seasons were still in full swing for harmful algal bloom monitoring, the synoptic stream and lake monitoring, and red flag programs. The biomonitoring program slowed down in the field, but prepared to ramp up in the lab sorting through samples collected all season. General public drinking water samples continue to come through our door every day, keeping the lab staff in between monitoring events, very busy. We were all very engaged throughout the month preparing for several events scheduled for November- more on those events in the next update!

CSI September 2024 Monthly Update

Summer has now turned to fall, but that did not mean work slowed down for us at the Community Science Institute. CSI Staff, Board of Directors, and dozens of volunteers have been working diligently throughout the month to continue to roll out our new strategic plan, fundraise, wrap up the Journey of Water Youth Education Series, monitor for HABs, collect stream and lake samples, and of course the lab work never ends with both environmental water samples and drinking water samples coming in daily for analysis! It's been a busy month, please read on to learn more.

CSI August 2024 Monthly Update

The summer may be winding down for many of us, but environmental monitoring continues until the flakes fly! It's been another busy month of fundraising and releasing our new strategic plan, collecting water samples from Cayuga and Seneca Lake tributaries, hosting the Journey of Water youth education series, sampling streams for benthic macroinvertebrates, and HABs, HABs, HABs! The CSI lab is running analyses on environmental water samples as well as drinking water samples brought to us by local homeowners, businesses, and municipalities. It's been a very busy summer, and we don't anticipate slowing down anytime soon!

CSI July 2024 Monthly Update

CSI staff and volunteers are in the midst of our busiest season of the year both in the field and in the lab! Hundreds of drinking water samples and environmental water samples are coming through our lab doors every week to be analyzed, our hardy volunteers are stationed along Cayuga Lake's shores monitoring for HABs, dozens of local children and their families are showing up to learn about the "Journey of Water", and CSI's board of directors has been busy finalizing our organizations first strategic plan!

CSI May & June 2024 Monthly Updates

Thank you for subscribing to our monthly newsletter to stay updated on the happenings here at CSI and in the neighboring watersheds. It's been a busy spring and the beginning of the summer here at the CSI office and lab- please forgive us for getting the monthly update out a little late!

April 2024 in Review: Community Science Institute Updates

April came roaring in with a stormwater event that had volunteers pulling on their boots and raincoats to collect synoptic stream samples, and the CSI lab kicked into high gear running analyses as the samples came "flowing" in. Seemingly overnight the world warmed up and the buds popped open revealing spring is in full swing! We are preparing for another busy summer season of synoptic monitoring, outreach and educational events, Harmful Algal Bloom monitoring on Cayuga Lake, and of course accepting water samples from the general public.

March 2024 in Review: Community Science Institute Updates

The month of March always feels like the Earth is awakening again in the Finger Lakes region. Ducks and geese fill skies as they move north, streams and waterfalls fill with winter melt off, tender spring ephemerals begin to push through the leaf litter towards the sun, and spring peepers begin to sing their spring songs. The slow season is behind us again, as we ramp back up for another busy field and lab season for CSI staff & volunteers!

February 2024 in Review: Community Science Institute Updates

With Spring on its way, our brief hiatus between monitoring seasons is behind us, and longer daylight hours are ahead. We are looking forward to the 2024 season with all the excitement and hustle bustle that is sure to come with it!

January 2024 in Review: Community Science Institute Updates

We are only a month into 2024, and we have already begun to prepare for the 2024 monitoring season! In the winter, CSI staff hunker down to review what worked well from our previous monitoring season and where we can improve. We also conduct outreach about our previous year's findings. Read on to learn about what we accomplished in January.

December 2023 in Review: Community Science Institute Updates

Happy New Year! We can't wait to share our exciting updates from the last month of 2023 with you here in our monthly update. We'd like to extend a big thank you to everyone who supported us in 2023, whether by sharing our name, using our water testing services, volunteering, or donating. Read on to see what we accomplished together.

November in Review: Updates from Community Science Institute

In this season of gratitude, we at Community Science Institute want to take a moment to express how thankful we are for all of you, our email subscribers. You make a difference in our community by staying up-to-date on local water quality issues. Many of you are our volunteers, our donors, and our friends and neighbors. All of you are our community of like-minded folks who care about our beautiful natural resources.

October in Review: Updates from Community Science Institute

We are amazed at how quickly the month of October passed! Our laboratory has been hard at work testing water samples from multiple monitoring events and even some October Harmful Algal Blooms. Of course, we would be remiss not to also mention our hard-working volunteer groups who collect those water samples. Read on to learn more about where we are in meeting our membership goal, the data our volunteers have collected this month, and some exciting upcoming events.

September in Review: Community Science Institute updates

Happy Fall! The days are growing shorter and cooler, but at Community Science Institute, we still have a lot ahead of us before we wrap up our sampling season! Our synoptic stream and lake monitoring always extends into the fall, as that allows our laboratory to keep up with the mass of samples collected by our volunteers. This year, the Harmful Algal Blooms continue to surprise us, with quite a few reported already in these first few days of October.

What has CSI been up to this August?

We enjoyed seeing many of our volunteers and supporters on the evening of Friday, August 18th, at our 2023 Volunteer Picnic. The meal we shared at the beautiful, lakeshore lodge at Camp Comstock was largely donated by Wegmans and Ithaca Bakery. This year, we incorporated Volunteer Awards and a Silent Auction for the first time!

July at Community Science Institute 🌻

You might know CSI for our water quality monitoring, but did you know that outreach and education is also a core part of our work to protect water quality?

June 2023 CSI Monthly Update

This month, we'd like to talk about our volunteers. Thanks to these ~250 amazing community members, we are able to test water quality from streams throughout the Cayuga Lake Watershed (and beyond) using chemistry and biological monitoring.

CSI’s May updates 🏖️- Gearing Up for HABs Season

Summer is just around the corner! At Community Science Institute, we can feel the pull of the warm weather and outdoor recreation. And we are sure that you feel it too! We have been hard at work preparing for the busy summer monitoring season. In this month’s update, we’ll share more about the Cayug…

CSI Monthly Update: April 2023

We have some exciting updates from Community Science Institute this month! More and more of our Synoptic teams have begun monitoring their streams, like our Red Flag volunteers do year round. Meanwhile, CSI staff are planning spring and summer outreach events and running our state-certified water te…

CSI Monthly Update: March 2023

Happy spring! As we collectively welcome back our spring ephemerals and the new buds on the trees, Community Science Institute welcomes back our synoptic volunteers. Some groups are already hard at work collecting their first samples of the year. We have some exciting updates to share with you this…

CSI Monthly Update: February 2023

It’s been a busy February getting ready for our monitoring season to start up again. Between Biomonitoring Open Lab Nights (which are ongoing - read more below), our volunteer trainings, and our outreach efforts, we are doing everything we can to make sure our volunteer teams will be well-supported…

CSI Monthly Update: January 2023

Happy New Year! We hope all our subscribers had a wonderful holiday season and are enjoying getting back into the swing of things this month. Though most of our monitoring programs are paused at this time of year, we at Community Science Institute have still been hard at work this winter.

CSI Monthly Update: December 2022

At this time of year, our monitoring programs have mostly come to a close. The days are growing shorter, and the holiday season is upon us. At Community Science Institute, we are taking what little extra time we have to reflect on what matters most to us: serving our community.

CSI Monthly Update: November 2022

I hope you are all enjoying this unseasonably warm autumn (despite its troubling implications about our warming climate). As you soak up this autumn sun, please consider soaking up some CSI data, too! Included in this Monthly Update is a link for newly entered data on the CSI database. This month,…

CSI Monthly Update: October 2022

Happy Fall, water stewards! We’ve had a full summer monitoring water quality across the Finger Lakes region and beyond. Keep an eye on our database as these thorough data continue to be entered and published—we at Community Science Institute look forward to seeing what trends emerge from this year’s…

CSI Monthly Update: September 2022

As August comes to a close, we at the Community Science Institute are sad to see the summer waning but look forward to what the autumn will bring! We are hoping for more rain to help us wrap up our monitoring season. This month, we are kicking off a new segment of our Monthly Updates: volunteer spo…

August 2022 CSI Monthly Update

Welcome to August, subscribers! Between the thunderstorms and the deafening dog-day cicada songs, you can tell we are fast approaching late summer. We are loving the challenge to stay current on our water monitoring duties over at the Community Science Institute, even as we say goodbye to several w…

CSI Monthly Update: July 2022

HAB-y Summer Solstice! In this update, you’ll find a summary of what we accomplished this June and what we’re working on this July. Now that it is officially summer, the Cayuga Lake HABs Monitoring Program is in full swing. Our volunteers are hard at work in this and all of our other water monitor…

CSI Monthly Update: November 2021

October was a busy month! Our volunteer partners completed multiple Synoptic Stream Monitoring Events including some unusually intense stormwater events, the Biomonitoring sampling season ended for the year, and the Cayuga Lake HABs Monitoring Program ended with an annual count of 102 blooms! Now, w…

CSI Monthly Update: August 2021

August was thankfully a bit quieter than July, although monitoring events, stormwater conditions, general public clients, and various projects kept us busy. The extreme rain of July seems to have passed into warm, humid late summer weather. Great weather for cooling off in a stream or in the lake (s…

CSI July Monthly Update

July has been a busy month here at CSI! Frequent and intense thunderstorms early in the month kept us busy chasing stormwater flows in the creeks, and as soon as these storms subsided, harmful algal blooms (HABs) began occurring along the shoreline of Cayuga Lake! Amidst this busy summer of monitori…

June 2021 Monthly Update from CSI

With summer ahead, exciting things are underway and keeping us busy here at the Community Science Institute. Right now we are focusing on completing our Synoptic Stream Monitoring Events, Red Flag Monitoring, Biomonitoring, and preparing for the HABs monitoring season ahead! With the 2021 harmful …