---
title: Establish Sampling Points
description: "## Summary Choosing the right sampling locations is critical to getting a useful picture of watershed conditions. This page provides guidance on selecting, verifying, and documenting monitoring sites for your watershed assessment. --- Where monitoring sites are placed is based…"
url: "https://aml-connect.org/aml-knowledge-base/establish-sampling-points/"
updated: "2026-03-13"
category: Watershed Tools and Methods / Assessing the Watershed / Conducting the Assessment
---

# Establish Sampling Points

## Summary

Choosing the right sampling locations is critical to getting a useful picture of watershed conditions. This page provides guidance on selecting, verifying, and documenting monitoring sites for your watershed assessment.

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Where monitoring sites are placed is based on the kind of picture you would like to obtain of the watershed.  Placing sites equally spaced between the headwaters and the mouth of your stream can reveal a baseline picture, however, closely spaced monitoring sites upstream and downstream of a certain site can be used to determine the extent of human impact.

Develop a monitoring plan for each sampling point: when each site should be sampled and which tests are to be conducted.  It is best to keep sampling scheduled at consistent intervals to maintain the integrity of the data collected. 

## Typical Watershed Assessment Parameters

Which parameters are measured will depend upon the questions that the assessment to measure.  The following are commonly sampled parameters that can provide a nice overview of watershed health.

- Water quality measurements (pH, dissolved oxygen, biological oxygen demand (BOD), conductivity, metals)
- Flow
- Visual observations
- Biology

Be sure to follow proper [field assessment procedures](http://amrclearinghouse.org/Sub/WATERSHEDassessment/FieldAssessmentProcedures.htm) at each sampling site during the assessment.

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## Related Pages

- [Delineating Your Watershed for Assessment](/docs/delineating-your-watershed-for-assessment) -- Mapping before sampling
- [Report AMD Discharges](/docs/report-amd-discharges) -- Documenting pollution sources
- [Field Assessment Procedures](/docs/field-assessment-procedures) -- How to conduct sampling
- [Developing a Monitoring Plan](/docs/developing-a-monitoring-plan) -- Structuring your program

## Source and Last Reviewed

Source: AMR Clearinghouse (amrclearinghouse.org). Migrated to AML-Connect. Last Reviewed: 2026-03-13.

**Tags:** assessment, monitoring, sampling, practitioner