It is week 5, and our work to review and advance information about oil and gas water monitoring is well under way. Here are a few projects that are currently in the works:

• OpenHour: We're looking forward to hosting November's OpenHour, which will focus on our research area. The call will happen on Tuesday, Nov 12 at 8pm EST. More info and a meeting link will be available soon.
• Public Lab at "Reptiles at the Bayou": Rollin and I will be at a family-friendly event in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans this Saturday, playing around with some of our water testing tools. The event will be hosted by some organizations that are doing work to promote coastal restoration and environmental engagement in our community. Come join us if you're in our area!
• Survey: I have established a set of interview questions to set intentions for our research area review. I've also been contacting folks in the community water testing world to set up interviews. I'm looking forward to posting about these conversations in the upcoming weeks.
• Research Area Review: Hosting OpenHour is giving us a chance to take stock of how the research is coming along. While there is so much more to learn and share, we are gaining a clearer picture of how we can measure certain water parameters to monitor impacts from the oil and gas industry. We can directly measure oil or gas content using the Hanby kits and spectrometry. We can also use the well-documented methods for Coquis, Riffle, KnowFlow, and other Arduino sensors to measure for water parameters like conductivity, turbidity, temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen, which may be indicators of oil and gas impact. Coming up: we'll dig deeper into these monitoring method options and more, and post some information about best practices for study design and representing data for advocacy purposes.