 The water sector and the forest sectors are regulated by different institutions and they also have different laws for the regulation. We know that about 25% of these forests was lost in the last 40 years and it seems that the rate of degradation is also increasing. So we wanted to gather evidence that would be useful for different stakeholders to make positions on how they can manage these forests best. By having these evidence on the table the negotiation is based on fact and people can make more informed decisions. This is a citizen science monitoring approach. The objective being to involve the community in matters relating to monitoring. The citizen scientists have been testing the nitrogen using the test strip where they dip the test strip in the water and after 60 seconds they compare the color change with the chart or the color scale that is given on this test kit and from there they can be able to tell the level of the nitrate in the river. So this is a turbidity tube for measuring the turbidity and the citizen scientists they fill the tube with water until the pattern on the bottom is no longer visible and then they are able to range the level of the turbidity using the scale on the tube. For each station we have a signpost and this signpost is generally to guide any citizen scientists who comes to the river to be in a position to send data to our central database. When I was a child you could even see the level of water going high up to the other side but during the recent years the level of water has really decreased drastically. Today I'm seeing that it is 60 centimeters so I put that 60 and then I sent to the central database they have now returned for me the message that gave me thank you for just meeting the water level. The information that we are actually collecting are meant to ensure that step by step we actually improve the water quality by carrying out innovation. On this side we're measuring water quality using state-of-the-art equipment that can measure parameters like nitrate concentration every 10 minutes. The sensor sends out a UV beam the UV light is absorbed by the nitrate and the sensor then calculates from this absorption how much nitrate is in the water. Here in the river the nitrate levels are very low but if you go to a stream that's draining an area with smallholder agriculture these nitrate levels already go up. If you then go to an area where there's much more intensive agriculture like for example tea plantations this level goes even further up. This is what we call a through-full tipping bucket we're measuring the part of the rainfall that falls through the canopy into these gutters. This tells us a little bit of how much of the rainfall is intercepted by the canopy so how much stays on the leaves on the trees maybe flows along the trees to the soil instead of falling directly on the soil. With this installation we're trying to collect soil water samples. There is a plate with a wick like in a candle in the soil. This wick absorbs moisture in the soil and leads it through a tube into a bottle like this one. So you can see it has been raining in the past days because otherwise the soil is too dry for the installation to collect any water. These water samples we analyze for stable water isotopes and these can be used to estimate how long it takes before the rain eventually reaches the stream. If there is a change in the water quality and in the water flow it is an indication that the ecosystem is not functioning correctly. We need to know how much water we have available and of which quality to be able to allocate water for the different needs that are there being it energy, industrial development, agriculture, drinking water supply etc. If we don't know how much water we have and of what quality and how much is going out we will not be able to satisfy the needs of everybody. The communities there they use a lot of the water they're directly for drinking water and small irrigation projects. Then of course you have the tea plantations downstream of the forest whereas a lot of water is being used for hydropower energy and for the tea growing and other agricultural activities. There might be a conflict between those communities of course accusing each other of water over abstraction of polluting water etc. So data collection helps to mitigate conflicts between these different groups.