Raised Watershed Wise

I am a Montana native who did much of my growing up in Missoula. I spent summers swimming in the cold waters of the Blackfoot River, learning to fish at the mouth of the Whitefish River, and sometimes even wading through the narrow channels of in-town diversion ditches. I’ve always been drawn to cool, flowing bodies of water. Now that I’m grown, I look back on the relationship I built with Montana’s natural bodies of water and realize how lucky I was to grow up with access to these areas.The fond memories I carry of summers spent playing in and around ephemeral diversion ditches in Missoula speak for the pristine quality of this landscape and the natural resources it offers to its residents. In the sixth grade I was given an assignment to write about my favorite place. I wrote my piece about a diversion ditch near my mother’s apartment. During the spring and much of the summer this ditch filled with clear flowing water. A layer of tiny rainbow pebbles littered the bottom and swaths of water strider insects darted across the water’s surface. Three billowing willow trees grew alongside the ditch and curtained the area off from the rest of the world. When the weather was hot, the dappled shade of the willows and the cool water of the ditch transformed the space into my private refuge.

Stacia in Idaho in 2011

I appreciate that I received an elementary education that valued and supported my curiosity and drive to explore. I attended Hellgate Elementary and Middle School from pre-K until 8^th grade, and during those years I participated in several field trips made possible by the Watershed Education Network. Memories of these field trips have stayed with me throughout my life, and I believe they played a significant role in the maturation of my relationship with Montana’s rivers and streams.

Participating in WEN field trips as a child allowed me to grow-up with a well-developed understanding and appreciation of my local watershed ecosystems. I learned about the water’s chemistry, the physical structure and behavior of a river, and the diversity of organisms living beneath the surface. When I entered high school and began traveling beyond the Northwest, I was surprised to find that rivers in other parts of the country hardly resembled those I had grown up knowing. My homesickness for the Clark Fork was especially strong when I visited cities where channelized rivers, corralled by concrete banks, flowed slow and thick with sediment and algae.

Much of my interest and love for streams and rivers can be attributed to a desire to uncover and interact with the many varieties of organisms in and around these areas. At home in Missoula I had memories of fishing stones from the bottom of rivers and turning them over in my hands in search of caddisfly nymphs tucked away in their cases of cemented sand and wood. I had spent every spring for as long as I could remember kneeling at the edges of rivers and creeks in search of nearly invisible fish fry. I hung a poster of native frogs and toads in my bedroom, and bought field guides to help me identify species of garter snakes I found sunning themselves on river banks.

In the spring when I was around nine or ten years old I attended a WEN field trip where we caught and examined macroinvertebrates from the riverbed. Several weeks later I was visiting my grandparents in Whitefish and playing at the edge of the Whitefish River, several yards from the back door of my grandparents’ house. Remembering what I had learned during my WEN field trip, I decided to take my river exploration one step further. I armed myself with a plastic bucket and a pink butterfly net from the dollar store and made my way into the slow moving water of the river. I positioned the netting in front of my toes and shuffled my feet into the stone and silt of the riverbed until yellow-brown sediment clouded the water around me. I lifted my net, hoping to find it teaming with the wriggling bodies of mayfly and stonefly nymphs. A few small stones swung in the netting and I reached in to fish them out. When I grabbed for the stones something hard, sharp, and very much alive, spasmed at my fingertips. Startled, I jerked my hand back and dropped the net into the water. After regaining some composure, reclaimed the net from the water and took another look at the big crawdad flopping inside the pink butterfly net.

Whitefish

Moments such as this one carry a lot of importance for me. As a child I felt I was simply spending my summer vacations at play. Today, I look back on this type of explorative play, and realize how much it has impacted who I am as a person and the things I most value in life. I want to make a conscious effort to continue to engage with local watersheds through recreation, conservation, education, and art. I am excited to have recently reconnected with WEN, an organization which has been a presence in my community for much of my life. WEN facilitates opportunities for volunteers like me to engage with my community and my water resources, and plays a major role in engaging and educating young Missoulians about their watersheds.

Fishing in the Blackfoot

            I believe my love for Missoula and the surrounding landscape harkens back to my earliest roots, for that I thank my teachers, community, and family. After graduating from Hellgate Middle School I went on to attend Big Sky High School and became heavily involved in the school’s science and creative writing programs. I decided to stay loyal to my hometown of Missoula and attended the University of Montana in pursuit of my Bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology. It seems I can’t bring myself to leave Missoula, as I’ve opted to join UM’s creative writing program and will be earning my MFA in creative non-fiction over the next two years. No matter where life takes me next, I know I will always be drawn back to Montana’s Rocky Mountains, the plants and bugs and fish that have been precious to me all my life, and the waters of the Blackfoot, Clark Fork, and Bitterroot Rivers.

Stacia Hill
WEN Volunteer

Mussel Detection Technology - Aquatic Invasive Species

     "I imagine you are all really into aquatic invasive species news," Heidi joked. If we were, we would know about the new techniques for detecting mussels. As the only remaining US watershed without them, we are concerned with making sure we stay that way. To do so, we must be vigilant and quick to detect them if they arrive.

     Mussel larvae, also know as veligers, were first detected in the Tiber Reservoir and Canyon Ferry in the fall of 2016. This marked the first time mussels had been found in Montana. Thankfully, these locations are not connected to the Columbia Watershed, so all the lakes and rivers on the Western side of the continental divide are safe, for now.

Zebra mussel veliger
Source: NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Resource Laboratory

     Detection efforts typically involve examining water samples using microscopy, Heidi said. Dogs are also used to inspect boats, shorelines, and docks, as they're trained to sniff them out. Imagine those police dogs that are used to find bomb residue and drugs, but instead of stationing them at an airport or police station, these dogs get to explore the shores of Montana lakes, seeking out tiny little shelled creatures. The students must've had a similar mental picture, because a few of them laughed. Dogs were deployed in November 2016 and confirmed the presence of mussels in the Tiber Reservoir and Canyon Ferry. US Fish & Wildlife Services has also utilized scuba divers to search for signs of mussels. Using divers brings up silly images of people wandering around underwater looking for something dark in the dark, but it's a lot easier to send people down in scuba gear with flashlights to check underwater features and pipes for mussel colonies than it is to send dogs!

Mussel inspection dog
Source: Working Dogs for Conservation

     A more recent development in detection technology analyzes environmental DNA, or eDNA. No, this doesn't mean the environment has its own DNA. eDNA is the remnants of DNA left behind by organisms as they shed cells, excrete waste, and rub against other things, like water or rocks. Some form of eDNA detection has been used for several years, but researchers at the Flathead Lake Biological Station have been working on ways to make it work with smaller samples and smaller budgets. This method can help researchers detect mussel presence at all stages of the mussel life cycle. Heidi summarized that in 2016, dogs, divers, and microscopy all found evidence of mussels, but later in 2017, only eDNA did. The question with eDNA, Heidi said, is whether eDNA indicates current presence of mussels if dogs or divers don't find any veligers.

     Since the technology is so new, there aren't standard procedures for how to collect and test eDNA, or how to interpret a positive test result. Perhaps eDNA lingers around after all living veligers and adult mussels are eradicated, or perhaps the DNA breaks down quickly and finding it means mussels are indeed lurking in our waters. As further research is conducted, this method may become more accurate at detecting low populations of mussels, perfect for taking early and quick action.

     Discussing the lengths to which we go to detect mussels helps drive home how important it is to keep them out. It also gives students an idea of how researchers and agencies are approaching the problem, and the creativity of new technology. When I was a young student, "research" sounded like sifting through stacks of papers or doing experiments in stuffy laboratories, but the development of eDNA analysis demonstrates that research attacks real world problems and ultimately tests solutions in the field, too. I think it's important to expose students to the developments in technology and problem solving so they can envision themselves doing the same thing in the future.

-Cassie Sevigny
AmeriCorps Team Member
Media Coordinator

Earth Day fun at Highlander Brewery

     Earth Day with WEN was a busy day. We had staff at MUD's huge annual celebration as well as a smaller event at Highlander Brewery. I elected to lead bug exploration and rock painting at Highlander.

     Highlander has a perfect set-up for WEN to host activities, as Grant Creek runs along the edge of the property, accessible from the outdoor patio space. I got to collect the bugs while Deb and some other volunteers set up the tables. The creek was shallow, but signs posted along the creek warn people to stay out. Currents can be deceiving.

     

     The kids that were running around the grass became interested in me as soon as they saw me in the water with a net. I shuffled my feet around on a flat patch to reduce the number of times I kicked rocks. Deb also reminded me that stoneflies like to live in the more oxygenated parts, so I collected some from the tiny rapids as well. When our second tub for bugs arrived, I convinced a one-time volunteer who was visiting to collect some bugs too. I passed off the waders and net and instructed him to stand facing downstream, so the water automatically pushes all the stirred up macroinvertebrates and dirt into the net. For a newbie, he had quite a robust sample of bugs in the tub for the kids!




    Kids swarmed the bug tub as soon as I carried it up from the creek and set it on a bench. We even had some parents and older siblings interested! To them I pointed out the differences in gill locations between stoneflies and mayflies, and that these locations influence how each insect swims. We even had a serendipitous moment where a mayfly started to emerge! Deb told the kids what was happening and let them decide what to do to help it along.

Cassie's stonefly

Rocks drying under the table

   I love rock painting, and chose this art activity for Earth Day since WEN hasn't had a rock painting day in a while. I painted a stonefly and a colorful caddisfly case to go with the dragonfly I painted with WEN several years ago. The kids loved this activity too, with several painting more than one rock. We just about ran out of our supply of rocks! I helped the kids write their names on the bottoms of their rocks before they started painting. We had a couple little ones, and two of them held up three fingers when I asked their names.

     "Your name is three?" I checked, and they nodded. "Are you sure?" The kids were very sure, so the parents had to step in to tell me their kid's name. They must have been more used to people asking how old they were!

      Later on while many of the kids returned to their running around the yard, a girl led me to a bug on rock. She asked if the bugs we showed them live in the water. This was a great opportunity to explain that they live in the water while they are young, and when they are older they have wings and live in the air, like the injured bug she found.

      Since I had to take my shoes off to wear the waders in the creek, and I was wearing flip-flops, I took the chance to walk around barefoot as long as the sun was out. Being barefoot helps me feel connected to the Earth, as there is no physical barrier separating me from the ground. The weather was gorgeous, and I felt like I was one of the kids. Even when the weather got shady and I had to put extra layers on, a new set of kids came by to ask if we would still have out bugs and paint out when they were done eating dinner. Having elements of earth (rocks), water (Grant Creek), and life (aquatic macroinvertebrates) available for the kids to explore embodies what Earth Day is all about - respecting the Earth, its ecosystems, and the life that lives on it as well as appreciating it in our own creative human way. This was a fun activity for the volunteers and the patrons of Highlander alike. I look forward to planning an event like this again!

-Cassie Sevigny
AmeriCorps Team Member
Media Coordinator

Women in STEM and Women in WEN

     In late February and early March, WEN  partnered with the Girl Scouts to provide after-school STEM lessons for girls at Washington Middle School. WEN provided watershed education that involved watershed enactments, data collection, and interpretation.

     We started with a map of the Columbia Watershed, ours, to orient them. To better explain the components of a watershed, Kyra led them through a simple 3D watershed construction. The girls took soda bottles and egg cartons, among other miscellaneous items, to create their idea of a mountain shape. Kyra helped them place a tarp over this with the folds representing valleys so they could see how water (in the form of rivers and lakes) eventually flows to the lowest point.

     The girls guessed how water would flow down the tarp valleys by placing strings. The strings started on the slopes and ended in the valleys, indicating that they understood water flows to the lowest point. Pointing at each feature, Kyra explained the headwaters, tributaries, and river stem. The girls identified a few areas that would be lakes as well.

     Then we told the girls to be the watershed. Two served as the headwaters, a couple on the sides as tributaries, and one as the Pacific Ocean. Connecting these features were the rest of the girls, serving as the river. As the source of the water, the headwater girls passed beads to their river buddies, with the beads representing one volumetric unit of water flow. Downstream, each girl had a cup with which they transferred the beads. The Pacific Ocean held a small bucket to contain all the incoming "water" from the "Columbia watershed."

     First they simulated low river flow (summer), passing the beads leisurely. For high river flow (spring snowmelt or storms), Kyra instructed the headwaters to pass the beads more quickly. Rainy audio played in the background as beads overwhelmed the girls at intersections of headwaters and tributaries. Beads bounced out of cups, as if the river was flooding.

     Then Kyra modified the game. She gave one headwater and one tributary pieces of trash to pass along with the beads. "It's getting disgusting..." said the girl holding the Pacific Ocean, as the trash collected in her bucket. Notice how only a few parts were polluted, but it polluted everything downstream, Kyra said. Then the girls were given cards with pictures of aquatic invasive species. These included mussels and a weed. These also spread quickly through the watershed, overwhelming the girls. This demonstrated how easily invasive species can colonize an entire watershed from one entry point.

    After each round, the girls did the math to see how many beads, trash pieces, and invasive species ended up in the “ocean” and compared these numbers graphically. The numbers differed drastically depending on the flow of beads.

     What struck me as these activities went on was how interested and participatory these girls were, and that they voluntarily signed up for a STEM after-school program. This indicates that girls are interested in science and math. Either we are catching them at an age before they feel discouraged by STEM, or girls in the community are starting to get the message that STEM is for them too, both of which are good outcomes.

     I felt proud that we were able to provide so many female science role models for them, as we had 4 WEN staff and interns present, including myself. I think it helped that the biology teacher (and WEN board member) who hosted us in her classroom was also a woman, so her classroom was filled with animal artifacts like it was its own natural history museum. On one wall were poster assignments by some of her students, depicting genetics and heredity of dragons. This caught the attention of one girl, who said she couldn't wait to take biology and draw dragons. "Dragons are more fun than peas," the teacher told me.

     All we have to do to make kids - and adults - interested in science and technology is make the content fun and interesting! If that means applying real world concepts to fantasy animals, I'm all for it. I think we did a pretty good job keeping the lesson interesting, even though it was simple. "Who knew counting beads could be so fun?" the Girl Scout coordinator said.

     I also realized how many women work and volunteer for WEN in general – we had 8 women in the office at one time one day! We didn't have to try hard to rally up female volunteers to represent WEN for the girls in the after-school program because WEN is already full of women. Not to mention that WEN was started by a woman - our lovely Director, Deb. I was also proud of Kyra for taking charge of teaching the lesson and organizing the girls, while Natalie, Taylor and I engaged the girls in small conversations about the activities. Teaching was new to her, and while I am also uncomfortable leading lessons, Kyra seemed a natural.

     Exposure to women who already are or have been involved in science helps them realize that such a path is possible, and they can be successful in it. This gives me hope for the future of female-driven science innovation.

-Cassie Sevigny
AmeriCorps Volunteer
Media Coordinator

Shade and Oxygen - Sentinel Floating Islands

Pattee Creek Retaining Pond in February

     "Cold and short" is what students recalled about their visit to the floating islands in Pattee Creek retaining pond. These students have been studying wetland health in science classes at Sentinel High School through a Floating Islands watershed health curriculum taught by Sylvia Doyle.


     A healthy wetland, defined by the students, depends on vegetation. Plants have roots which "hold the bank in," "slow the current," and "shade the algae, so less grows." The plants need light, of course. There should be animals, whose feces and dead bodies provide fertilizer for the soil. Decomposers must be around to break down the dead plants and animals. The habitat type is important, too: "It's gotta have a rocky bottom for fish to lay their eggs, and for bugs."


     Another key aspect of healthy wetlands is dissolved oxygen.

     "Our fishermen and fisherwomen know dissolved oxygen is important, like for trout. Our fish are cold water species, not just because they need cold water but because it means there's more dissolved oxygen." Colder water can hold more oxygen than warmer water.

     "So it's really good to have shade on water," a student observed.

     I thought of Stream Team expeditions I'd gone on in the past, where I dunked my hands again and again into freezing water. My hands would turn pink and then white, but I knew the cold was necessary for the river's health.

     "When you see a white cap in a river or lake, that means the water is completely saturated, over 100%, so the bubbles can't mix in," Sylvia pointed out. The water already has so much oxygen dissolved that it can't take any more. She was referring to river rapids or waves formed by wind, but the image of ocean waves crashing on the shore sprang to my mind.

     Shade not only cools the water but prevents the overgrowth of algae. Too much algae limits the amount of oxygen that the water can contain, and encourages bacterial growth.

     "Bacteria can turn nitrogen gas into soluble form," Sylvia said. Some amount of nitrogen enters the water from gas exchange with the air, but bacteria facilitate this process. The students knew nitrogen is important for the ecosystem and that it can come from decomposing matter, but too much nitrogen makes it hard for organisms to breathe. This is also why fertilizer in runoff can be a problem for wetlands, as it adds more nitrogen than the system is accustomed to.

     Even though Sylvia only brings her lessons to the class once per month, the students remember many bits and pieces of what wetlands need to stay healthy and work together to put the big picture together.

-Cassie Sevigny
AmeriCorps Team Member
Media Coordinator

How Many Mussels is Too Many? - Aquatic Invasive Species

     As the Willard students learned, mussels can clog up pipes, reducing water access, and use the resources that native species rely on, edging them out of the ecosystem. How do we know if the mussel population is large enough to be a concern?

     Heidi asked the students to image a nuclear power plant. Nuclear power plants rely heavily on the functioning of cooling systems. If mussels were introduced to the cooling system, the water flow would slow and heat up, rendering critical cooling processes ineffective. A small number of mussels would be disastrous.

     More likely, mussels would affect hydroelectric power.

     "Montana has some of the cheapest power in the US" because the Columbia Watershed has so many dams, Heidi pointed out. Mussels would slow the rate at which dams produce electricity, increasing power prices for all the residents receiving power from the Northwest.

     The problem lies in the rapid reproduction rates of mussels. Mussel populations do not stay small for long, as the students recalled on my first visit. Mussels' ability to thrive in most any water body contributes to their designation as "invasive," and means that any number of mussels where they are not supposed to be is too many.

Bar graph of ml of water filtered by
mussels in 1, 3, 8 hours

Chart of ml of water filtered by
mussels in 1, 3, 8 hours

   Heidi assisted the students in performing a small demonstration on the impact mussels have on water, aside from their physical presence. One student put a scoop of rich dirt into a plastic soda bottle to simulate the detritus that many water species extract nutrients from.

Photo courtesy of Bailey Roseveare

     "Mussels filter how much water per day?" she asked.
     "One liter [each]," a student answered. The student poured one liter of water into the bottle to represent the water column. Then Heidi held up a contraption with a small canister attached to a screw cap.

     "Specialized gills are what these cotton balls are going to represent," Heidi explained as she stuffed two cotton balls into the canister. After attaching it to the bottle, Heidi set out a clear glass jar and began to squeeze the bottle. The water was forced into the contraption and filtered by the cotton ball gills.

     "What do you notice about the water in the jar?" she asked.
     "It's clear."
     "It's pretty clean."
     "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Heidi followed up.
     "Bad," the students agree. One clarified that it was bad because the water had no nutrients left in it.
     "What's happening to the gills?" Heidi took the cotton balls out, now brown from collected soil.
     "They're getting dirty," a student replied.
     "They're filtering nutrients," Heidi reminded them.

     This realization that clear water was unhealthy contrasted the students' initial expectations from the week prior. They wrote that clear water was cleaner, which is good for our drinking water. They figured cleaner, clearer water was less likely to make humans and animals sick. Now, however, they understood that the detritus that makes water unappealing to us is actually an important food source. It also maintains ecosystem balance, as they would learn next.

     "The mussels create an environment unsuitable for living," a student concluded.
"Or we could call it sterile," Heidi elaborated.

     In addition to removing helpful material floating in the water, mussels can increase water toxicity. Mussels produce pseudofeces, or "fake poop".
If there's anything they don't want, the dump it out," Heidi explained. This means "they spit out the toxic stuff."

     The clear water column expands the literal zone of bodies of water. The litoral zone is the area where sunlight can reach the bottom of the water column. This is the section where plants can grow, as they utilize the sunlight for photosynthesis. A larger litoral zone allows more plants to flourish.

     "What happens [with plants] at the end of the growing cycle?" Heidi asked.
     "They die."
     "They die and release phosphorus, perfect conditions for algae blooms," Heidi confirmed. If there is a larger litoral zone, more plants grow, and more plants die, releasing more phosphorus. Algae blooms make water anaerobic, depleting the oxygen available and thus making it difficult for creatures that need oxygen, such as fish and certain bacteria, to survive. This anaerobic state is conducive to the growth of botulism, a toxic bacteria.

     The class read over an article in The Oakland Press about bird deaths that Heidi had passed out. What do mussels have to do with birds? I wondered. Botulism contaminates the food that loons and other waterfowl eat, entering their nervous systems and shutting down their bodies. The article went on to list the numbers of loons, ducks, gulls, and other birds found dead on the shores of water infested with mussels. It provided a stark image of the chain of effects mussels have on an ecosystem.

     Heidi connected the article back to Montana, noting the Montana has the largest loon population west of the Mississippi. If mussels made it to the Columbia Watershed, it would devastate this valued population.

     We revisited the pros and cons of having clear water in aquatic ecosystems, again emphasizing how our assumptions of human needs do not always match with the needs of other organisms.

     "Wow, and they're only this big, they're tiny!" a student expressed amazement at the damage that can be caused by a creature the size of a fingernail.

     Watching the students grasp the interconnectedness of ecosystem elements and the impacts small changes can have gave me hope that early education like AIS will lead to better environmentally-informed citizens in the future.

-Cassie Sevigny
AmeriCorps Team Member
Media Coordinator 

Those are Some Gravelly Mussels - Aquatic Invasive Species-

     They're in our lakes, they're in our pipes, they're on our boats. They're in every major watershed in the US except the Columbia, which is ours.

     Mussels.

     Mussels are bivalve mollusks. They have two shell halves that protect the mussel's soft body. Mussels can attach to many surfaces, including the outsides of boats, which enables them to travel between bodies of water. Such mobility is the reason for careful boat-cleaning requirements. Female zebra mussels can produce 500,000 eggs per year, with mature mussels sometimes reaching a million eggs per year, resulting in rapid reproduction and establishment in an ecosystem where there was no prior mussel population. This kind of population growth can threaten the ability of native species to survive. Originally from Eurasia and now thriving across North America, mussels provide the perfect example of an aquatic invasive species for WEN's Aquatic Invasive Species (AIS) curriculum, called Columbia Headwaters Education Kit 4.

     Heidi Sedivy leads AIS lessons once a week at Willard Alternative High School, where small class sizes enable intimate engagement with the imminent threat and application of science to relevant local issues. On January 30th I joined Heidi and Bailey, AIS Assistant, on my first classroom program.

    Bailey began by asking the students to think about how mussel invasion might affect human activities. As mussels settle down in the pipe that will become their home, they reduce the water flow rate exponentially. Given their proclivity for clogging up pipes, mussels could prevent the efficient transport of water for agricultural irrigation or hydrating cattle. This increases the difficulty of raising crops and animals, which would increase prices for consumers and decrease profits for companies.

     With human implications in mind, the class set up a lab to examine the physical effects of mussel populations on water flow. Heidi and Bailey demonstrated how to use the equipment. A translucent funnel (aka the top cut off of a plastic soda bottle) sat on top of a clear tube, about an inch in diameter. At the bottom was a filter before the rubber output. This tube simulates a pipe. White gravel would serve as our mussels (though they reminded me of the barnacles that grow on submerged posts and rocks in the Puget Sound).

   Split into two groups, the students poured 2 liters of water through the funnel and timed how long it took to travel through the tube and empty out into a bucket below. After a test-run of an empty tube, they added 5cm of gravel and timed the water again.


     "Mm, look at that dirty water," one girl remarked on the dirt washing off the tiny rocks.
     "You're cleaning our rocks for us!" Bailey replied.

     Even at this lowest increment of "mussels" the water took significantly longer to fully filter through.

     The students noticed that the tubes had slightly different rates, even without the rocks slowing the water.

     "Maybe one team is pouring faster," someone suggested.

     After several rounds of adding "mussels" and pouring water through, the data was ready for analysis. The students noticed that the water did filter through more slowly the more gravel they added to the tube. However, the times from each team did not quite match up...

     "I think those rates are really weird," one student commented.

     Indeed, the average time for 20 cm of gravel was .4 seconds faster than for 15 cm! How could this be?

     "The tube might be haunted," someone else said. While this counts as a hypothesis, we could not test it, so the conversation moved on. What else could cause variation in the experiment, or how could real mussel pipe-clogging differ from the model?

     "I think the rate would fluctuate because the mussels stick to the sides [of pipes] and not just the bottom." This could allow many more mussels to congregate before problematic water flow indicates their presence.

     The class wrapped up with some brief art: creating diagrams, or visual models, of the experiment. This way, when they created graphs the next week they would have a handy reference of what they did.

Mussel experiment diagram

-Cassie Sevigny
AmeriCorps Team Member
Media Coordinator

Swimming Down Higgins in the Wild Walk Parade

    Sunday morning Becca summoned me (well, politely requested) to help walk the fish up Higgins to the starting point of the parade. It was propped up over a bike and trailer, which made it easier to carry. As we dragged this mostly-completed fish downtown, we got many stares and smiles, and several compliments. The fabric had been spray-painted with a shimmery turquoise, and red and yellow spots added to make it look more realistic. Upon reaching the red X's we hastily attached the dorsal fin to its support (a yard stick found lounging at the WEN office).

     Several interns volunteered to operate the fish, including myself, Lauren, Maizie, and Joanna, along with Becca. Becca was responsible for the gills, Lauren and Maizie held up the spine and fin, and Joanna (in the tail) moved the whole thing side to side. I got to open and close the mouth. The head did not have specific handles to hold onto, so we added a duct-tape handle onto the lower half, and covered this with Becca's stonefly wings from last year to hide it. This also had the effect of making the fish look like it was eating a bug. My other hand held onto the red tubing that served as the spine.

     The plan was simple. I would look through the "nose" gap and through the open mouth to follow Al, dressed up in her caddisfly case costume, as if trying to eat her. She would guide the fish down the street so we avoided hitting other parade-goers. For the most part this worked, except when the parade slowed down and I ran into her a couple times. When we could tell early on the parade was slowing, the fish did tricks. Al zigzagged across the street, with the trout chasing the tasty snack she was, and several times she led the trout in a full circle! We stayed toward the back of the parade to minimize collisions and ensure we had room to make the trout truly come to life.

Chasing Al (courtesy of Mike Lessard)

Photo courtesy of Kurt Wilson (The Missoulian)

     The cardboard of the head shaded me nicely, keeping the heat and burning rays of the sun off me. Those under the fabric middle complained of the heat, as it seeped through more easily there. My arms did tire, as predicted, even with alternating which held the top of the head and which opened the mouth. At times I rested the top on my head to take some of the weight, but this made it harder to see and follow Al. Partway through the parade the hinge holding the jaw to the head dislodged, so Becca and I worked as a team to keep it together. She held the jaw in her mouth while I moved it with one hand, and when she needed a break I rested the top on my head and used both arms to move the jaw. In addition to this, the joints of the gills came apart too, but Becca held them together. Even with Frankenstein Fish falling apart at the seams, WEN folks kept it swimming!

     As we made our way toward Caras Park, we heard many shouts and exclamations about our fish, though we could not see who made them. "It's a shark!" adults would call, and some more generally and only slightly more accurately, "Look at the fish!" It was the children who corrected their parents, calling out, "Trout!" We were told a photographer followed us the whole way too.

The Fish Operators! (courtesy Mike Lessard)

     Our trout was a hit, and much thanks is due to all the volunteers who helped put it together (Al and Becca put in some loooong hours the day before the parade!) and carry it down Higgins for the public to see. Those of us who were inside the trout took it, slightly broken apart, back to WEN and celebrated the day with some Big Dipper ice cream afterwards.

-Cassie Sevigny
WEN Intern

Frankenstein's Fish

     The Roxy's Wild Walk Parade came back in full swing this year, with a warm sun overhead and upbeat music leading the way! WEN got straight to work to create the best costume of this year's parade. The students dressed as water-bugs last year had commented that it would have been more fun to swim alongside a trout.

     First, there was a gathering of great minds at the WEN office to determine how to construct such a thing. How large should it be? Should it move? Should we carry it or wear it? What material should we make it out of? Becca was inspired by the design of Chinese dragons, with the creature carried along by several people. We would have a fish puppet of sorts, with a mouth that opened and shut, and a tail that swished side to side.

     The fish needed to be lightweight enough to carry, given its large size, so Becca made a trip to Home Resources, a local hardware store. She found some red plumbing tubing we would use to hold the fish's shape.
"How far can I bend this? What can I use to cut it?" she asked.
"You know this is for plumbing, right?" the man behind the counter replied after answering.
Of course she knew, but creativity is famous for re-purposing items.

     Some of the tubing was bent into a U shape to form the outline of the lips, and held taut by wire. A longer piece connected to the upper lip and stretched back to form the spine, which everything else would connect to. At this point, I drew a smattering of design possibilities on the whiteboard as we brainstormed the rest of the fish's configuration. These drawings were rife with disproportionate stick people to indicate where a person should fit inside the fish. (I had to dramatically discard several non-dry erase markers before I could take on this task.)

     Al, a long-time WEN volunteer, disassembled some cardboard boxes and we arched them between the spine and lip to give shape to the head. Becca thought it would be cool to have movable gills, so the next task was to connect tubing to the "spine" in such a way that it would move but not fall off. Our initial version used the assistance of duct tape. We did not have many hours this first day, so we ended with the basic skeleton of the trout.

     I came into the office later in the month and Becca told me about the costumes the kids from the Sussex and Community School were designing. Some made bug costumes like last year, and another class decided to be ducks. Becca really wanted to borrow some ducklings from local people, but... "turns out people aren't fond of you borrowing their ducks - and bringing them to a preschool." So without the visual aid, they turned paper plates into duck bills to wear on their heads.

     When I returned to WEN the week before the parade, a volunteer was applying a second coat of paint to the paper skin others had started previously. A volunteer named Karen showed me her process for mixing white, black, blue and green so they approximated the same color of grey that was already dried onto the paper and we tag-teamed the rest of the painting. Al arrived soon after and we tackled the problem of how to lay the skin over the fish so there wouldn't be any strange gaps. Al attached hangars and wire to the end of the tail (which had been structured while I was gone) to support the tail fin. Becca had given me keys to the basement to retrieve this tail fin, which was painted gorgeously onto paper like the rest of the skin by another volunteer named Nicole. Unfortunately, it was slightly too short! We decided to address the rest of the skin first, and deal with extending the tail fin later.

     Several other interns had arrived by this point, and since we could not proceed without some sort of sticky substance, one of them kindly went out to buy rubber cement for us. Al and I used the time the intern was away to cut one of the sheets of paper skin so it would most efficiently cover the fish's head, without creating oddly-shaped strips we couldn't use. One sheet perfectly covered the head when we cut and rearranged it, saving the last three for the tail. (We held up the tail and laid them over it to ensure it was enough.) The intern returned and we excitedly glued the skin down, ducking under tables to access both sides, and attaching binder clips to hold the frame and skin together while it dried.

     Becca arrived again soon after with some blue-grey fabric, dyed herself, which covered the middle section of the fish that would allow it to bend and swim. We had some difficulty determining how to drape it over and still see the gills, but the fabric was long enough we could cut it in half and fully cover each side. (I'm not quite sure how this problem was solved, but that's what happens when you leave a project in someone else's hands for a day.)

     Just as I was about to leave for the afternoon, Nicole showed up, saving us the difficulty of attempting to recreate her tail design and coloration for the other side of the fin. Having her finish it kept the style consistent.

     It took a total of 7 volunteers and four afternoons to design and assemble our Frankenstein's Fish. All that was left was to see if it would swim....

-Cassie Sevigny
WEN Intern

Sussex Snow Cheetahs Learn about Water

On a February afternoon, the sun warmed the air, but left the dirt beneath the grass a tad damp. In a line along the path by the river, the Snow Cheetahs (a Sussex Kindergarten class) were asked what they thought they'd be learning on their field trip to the WEN office.
     "About the underground water thingy," one of them suggested. The watershed!
     Becca strode down the bank to the water's edge, performed a couple tricky contortions to reach her hand into the water without falling in, and lifted up a pile of leaves tied together with a red ribbon. This was one of the students' leaf packs, carefully assembled and weighed two months before to measure how much the macro-invertebrates were eating.
     "They're almost gone!" one of the girls exclaimed.
     A fallen log lay across the bank near their leaf packs. Some gouge marks were gnawed into its surface. "What are these?" Becca asked. Several kids mumbled hesitantly and then confidently about beavers, excited by Becca's confirmation: "They're beaver marks!"

After checking on their leaf packs, we all gathered in a circle on the grass outside the Swift Building. We warmed up for the lesson with a water cycle song. One of the boys sat next to me, holding my hand tightly, which made it difficult to act out the song's gestures. At each step of the cycle mentioned in the song, the students yelled "STOP!" Then Becca paused the song to explore the new concept.
     "Does anyone know what evaporation is?" Several hands shot up. One boy explained, "It's when water goes up. You might think water can only go down but it can go up."
      Another boy considered a scenario. Evaporation happens "when a puddle gets hot." On that note, Becca gave the example of steam coming off boiling water when you make spaghetti. The Snow Cheetahs agreed they'd made spaghetti before and liked it. Halfway through the song, the child ended up in my lap.
     When the song finished the Snow Cheetahs got out their journals so they could draw what they thought the watershed looked like. Many drew rivers flowing under the soil.
     "I'm going to draw it going to somebody's house," said one boy, presumably thinking of a well or plumbing with access to the watershed.

 

Sadly, I had to leave to attend my own class at this point, so I did not get to watch the Snow Cheetahs act as water droplets in the cycle, going from station to station, mimicking how water moves from rivers to clouds to the ocean to animals. After this game they filed (well, "filed" is perhaps too orderly a word) into the Swift building and up the stairs to the WEN office to watch Becca demonstrate how the watershed works with our flow model. I can only imagine they found this exciting.

The Snow Cheetahs' teacher sent us these two pictures from the field trip:

-Cassie Sevigny
WEN Intern

Bonner Science Fair!

On Friday, February 19, 2016, many Watershed Education Network Interns judged the science fair at Bonner School.  The judges decided who will go on to the state science fair which is happening at the UM March 21 and 22, 2016. The top three students with the highest score will go to the state science fair from the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade.  The UM still might be looking for judges for the state science fair if you are available.

There were many projects ranging from ones that involved coins, food, animals, and many more interesting topics.  One that stuck out was a student that was doing research that will affect his future. This student's family works with farm animals and this student was seeing how much weight a pig would gain in a month with controls on many aspects.  Some of the controls the student set were how much food the pig got, what type of food the pig got, and how many times it was fed in a day.  This project helped the student understand how much effort it takes to own farm animals.

All the 6th to 8th graders at Bonner School had to do a science fair project.  A science fair project is a tool that helps students understand the scientific process and has the kids apply the scientific process to a real-world example. The students had freedom to choose the topic their project covered.  All the students got to present their project to a volunteer judge and did a great job.

Washington Middle School’s flagship program is underway!

Washington Middle School on Thursday October 1^st kicked off its first flagship program event and WEN was able to participate! This week’s lesson was based on the different types of aquatic macro invertebrates that inhabit our local streams and rivers.  Students were not only taught the general importance of macros as indicator species of pollutants but students also received an in depth lesson on the different feeding groups within our local macro invertebrate community.

                Students were informed of two ways to categorize macroinvertebrates: how the food is obtained and or the type of food that is consumed.  While both are proven to be accurate, macros are omnivores and may feed on different food sources seasonally. Therefore we focus on how food is obtained by macros as means for categorizing. Macro invertebrates are divided into five primary categories.  Scrapers, shredders, collectors, engulf- predators and piercers.

                As a way to test the ability of macros to break down and consume detritus, students in pairs collected leaves and created leaf packs. Leaf packs are roughly softball sized and are contained by netting with small holes to allow macros to freely move in and out of leaf packs.

                The leaf packs are currently submerged at student chosen locations in ponds near Washington Middle School. We will revisit Washington Middle School’s flagship program this week after having collected the leaf packs. In class students will weigh their leaf packs and compare them to the pre-pond submersion weight that was obtained last Thursday.  After comparing the two weights, students will consider the influence that macros had on the total weight changes and rate of consumption.

                Thanks to all of our students, Washington Middle School’s flagship program coordinator Mike Lessard and the faculty that helps keep applied science in the classroom!