Over the last two decades, there has been a substantial increase in community based monitoring projects, with the USA, Australia, Canada and India leading the field.
Community based environmental groups have included monitoring as part of their wider activities, sometimes supported by other organisations such as conservation charities, universities or government agencies.
Examples include the Waterkeeper Alliance, which has programmes in 15 nations, the community based air quality monitoring programme run by the Global Community Monitor and local species monitoring projects run in response to concern about reduction in population of particular species.