Macro-Invertebrate Studies

We have been bringing our classes down to the river once a week for the last 3 or 4 weeks.

The weather has been warm and pleasant, and the water level has been low enough for the students to wade across.

 We recently did a macroinvertebrate study where the students took a tally of all the different macroinvertebrates they found.  It is a way to measure the health of the river.

   Lots of Caddisfly and Mayfly larvae means low pollution levels. We found pretty high numbers.

We will keep this data and compare it to future data at different locations, or different times of the year.

We have been taking our students to the River. While there, we have been exploring the riverbank to look for evidence of wild life, erosion, pollution, etc.

Click this link to see a short video

Sleepers River Studies

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://youtu.be/DZyZ4BgTkzs

Sent from my iPhone

Video of Sleeper's River  - June 2014

June 2014

Sleeper's River Bank Photos

Email from Ben Copans, Watershed Coordinator, Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation

Hi Marcia,

It was great to meet with you and Allison today and do a little adventuring to the sleepers River.  Hope it was OK to just stop by as I was driving by the school and figured I would give it a shot and the timing seemed to work out well.  I am excited about your idea of getting students down on the river to learn so just let me know if there is any way I can help support you in this effort.  It sounds like you will be working on getting a trail down to the river which is great and then will be having some classes in the fall to get students familiar with the river and then get into discussions about human impacts on the river and a service project.  We discussed a few service projects that might be possible for the students including cleanup, a rain garden on the school somewhere (which could tie in with a discussion of the construction and separation project), as well as the possibility for a buffer planting project if a site could be located.  Again I think macroinvertebrate sampling would be a good project to consider as a part of this.

Finally the link to the ANR atlas I mentioned today is:

http://anrmaps.vermont.gov/websites/anra/

This is a great resource to look at things such as topography, watersheds, water quality conditions and includes the parcel boundaries which comes in handy with regards to the school property and planning access to the river.  I attached the map with the school property boundary shown over the aerial photo with some contours shown which provides a bit more context then the map we had today.

Again let me know if there is anything I can do to support this and I look forward to hearing from you in the fall when you get back into planning for this effort.

Ben

Ben Copans, Watershed Coordinator1229 Portland Street, Suite 201

St Johnsbury, VT  05819

(802) 751-2610  Cell (802) 490-6143 / ben.copans@state.vt.us

www.watershedmanagement.vt.gov

Email from Lawrence Hayes - Fairbanks Museum meteorologist

Lawrence Hayes <lhayes@fairbanksmuseum.org> June 24, 2014

Hi Marcia Here are a couple of links for river data online:
http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/index.php?wfo=btvhttp://waterwatch.usgs.gov/?m=real&r=vt&w=map

You can email Leila Nordmann , our Director of Programs, at lnordmann@fairbanksmuseum.org

Best,Lawrence---------------------------Lawrence HayesMeteorologistFairbanks Museum802.748.2372 x113