Riverwatch, Part Two: Physical Survey

Last fall, my students and I did our first physical survey of the Saline River.  I decided to do it on a Thursday after school, so I sent a note describing the purpose of the trip to parents, along with a map.  I asked them to bring their child to the river and stay with us to supervise.  Eight dads and one mom showed up with their children, so we had a group of 18, plus me.  Perfect size and there was a one-to-one adult to fourth grader match!  The water wasn't very deep, so students just wore their rain boots.  Most of them ended up getting their boots full of water, though.  I was the first one to get a bootful! The kids loved that!

The first step was filling out a site sketch data sheet.  This included stream name, nearest town, date, time, county, watershed, latitude & longitude, and number of participants.  Students each sketched the  site.  Then they observed the water to determine turbidity (how clear or cloudy it was) and odor.  They checked the canopy cover, stream bank vegetation, and stream substrate composition.  That was all we could do on the bank.  Next step: get into the water!

Before we got started, I appointed one student to be the videographer.  Using an iPad, he did a great job of recording it all.  We also now have the special bonus of his running commentary on the whole process.  Hilarious!  The first step was measuring the width of the river.  Since I wasn't sure how deep it would be in the middle, I waded across and one of the kids held the measuring tape.  Then we measured the depth in 3 places and calculated the average.  Stream flow was next.  We marked out a lane ten feet long and 5 feet wide with orange flags.  We then floated a ball down the lane, timed it, and calculated and recorded the average velocity.

Before we left, we needed to get some macroinvertebrates for the biological survey.  Different types of macroinvertebrates are a factor in determining water quality.  So, the kids took turns kicking water and substrate into a kick net and filling a bucket with our samples.  The next day, after I showed our video to the students who were unable to come, we got out hand lenses and I borrowed the nurse's lice light to see what, if any macroinvertebrates we had captured.  Unfortunately, we didn't find many.  Hopefully we'll get more next time!