The fish, mussels, and insects in French Creek at Bicentennial Park in Meadville probably did not know what was happening to their riffle habitat on September 27. Not only was high and swift flow trying to sweep them away, but 35 girls from Ellis School in Pittsburgh kept trying to scoop them up in nets. Little did the aquatic life know that it would provide a fabulous experience and science lesson for the students visiting from 80 miles south. 

In hopes of witnessing the great biodiversity (different living things) that a clean waterway can contain, Ellis spent the day learning about French Creek’s aquatic life. Creek Connections staff took them to one of the best spots to catch critters and despite the high water, they succeeded at their mission. A few squeals of excitement were heard, or were they squeals from being grossed out? 

The Ellis girls worked very well together kicknetting up insects, searching the substrate (bottom of stream) for freshwater mussels, and keeping each other from falling into the water. Overall, not too many girls got wet, live mussels and empty shells were found, and lots of macroinvertebrates were caught. 

Huge, 5-inch hellgrammites were the big attraction. “What is that?” was a    common outcry when this unique looking creature was picked off a net. These insects love a good riffle to live in because of the high amounts of oxygen, and Ellis students saw how they and other insects can cling to rocks and not get washed downstream. For instance, they also found: water pennies, shaped like a suction cup sticking to rocks; giant stoneflies, hiding within rock crevices; and burrowing mayflies, under the gravel and sediments out of the flow. The many bugs they found would be compared to what they captured earlier in the month from the Allegheny River. 

In addition to looking for things living on the rocks, the Ellis girls would also look at the rocks themselves. They took home a random collection of rocks in order to do a substrate comparison between French Creek and their home site on the Allegheny River. 

Other important tasks the girls had to accomplish that day was to determine the flow rate of French Creek and to take plankton samples from a bridge. The plankton was for comparisons between the two sites and also from plankton tows taken from Lake Erie. They wanted to see if there would be a big difference in the microscopic creatures they found in lotic (flowing) water versus lentic (still) water. We wonder what they found out? 

Ellis’ trip to the French Creek launched the start of a few more days they would spend in Northwest PA doing scientific work. Later they went out on a research boat on Lake Erie, did some hiking, and had a great time away from school for a few days. The Creek Connections staff had fun hosting them for the day. 

-by Danielle Peirce, Sarah Bucklew, Abby Grant, Jacob Moon (Seneca Valley Students) 

We are students from Seneca Valley High School in Ms. Griest’s biology class who are beginning to become involved in Creek Connections by testing the Little Connoquenessing Creek which flows into the Connequenssisng Creek. The Connoquenessing was recently ranked as the 2nd most polluted stream in the United States. One of the main causes is that there have been elevated nitrate levels in the creek, where a local steel company has been dumping in an excessive amount . Although this has been done legally, it has been affecting our community which gets its water from the creek in times when there is a shortage of water. A meeting was held in Zelienople by the Connoquenessing Watershed Association for local citizens who were concerned about their local creek. 

Why did we go? Well, it WAS extra credit, but we got to have the experience of reporting and investigating, while getting answers to our questions. For example, Sarah's sister just had a baby and she wondered if the nitrate levels were safe (high nitrates can cause problems for pregnant mothers and young babies), while some of us were just interested in the topic. 

Our teacher, Ms. Griest wasn’t able to attend the meeting because of open house at our school. But she didn’t mind getting the chance to get us involved and find ways to get her students interested in what they were researching, so she asked for volunteers and ended up with the four of us. 

The meeting seemed to be about public awareness and how people are working together to solve the problem dealing with the Connoquenessing Creek. They definitely had a lot of information to give to everyone. 

Although we were the youngest people attending the meeting, there were people ranging from farmers, to gas station attendants, to senior citizens there. At first we felt out of place, but than as the meeting progressed people seemed AMAZED that we students seemed to know so much. It was as if they expected us kids not to care and I am sure they didn’t expect us to know more than they knew! 

We found out that they are testing for the same things we are testing for in Creek Connections. They asked us to give them, the Connoquenessing Water Association, the data that we collect! And it isn't; something that you can slack off on, you have to meet all the testing deadlines, rain or shine. Some of our classes have already had experience in testing in rainy weather! 

When we returned to class the following day, we were each required to present the information to our classmates. Then we went outside for our first day of testing, accompanied by Laura Branby, Pittsburgh Area Coordinator for Creek Connections, to help us along. This meeting has created an excitement for everyone because now we have an even better, more important reason to study our creek! But hey! We didn't do this for nothing.......there WAS extra credit involved! .

-by Laura Tingley with assistance from Chris Resek

It is time to elect a new President. So who would be more likely to help you out on your chemistry testing of local waterways or who would be more eager to canoe the clean waters of French Creek – George Bush or Al Gore? 

To answer these questions and find out the scoop on how the two prominent candidates plan to protect or threaten the waterways you are sampling, we wrote the letters, made the phone calls, and even used email to research the answers. Okay, so we only got a generalized thank-you letter from Al Gore with no specific answers. So we took it upon myself to dig up the dirt and find out what George and Al are going to do to our waterways. 

Let’s first examine the Republican ticket: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. This ticket believes that the Endangered Species Act should no longer be a federal regulation and instead, the states should decide whether or not to protect species. This directly relates to the importance of waterways and habitats for many species. While the nationwide act has helped protect species like the Gravel Chub, found in our waterways, state control may allow new species to be protected because they are only scarce in a certain state. This would allow the state to implement regulations to protect that species, but levels of protection of species may vary from state to state. 

To provide the necessary resources for land and wildlife conservation and encourage local and private conservation, Governor Bush states that he will fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund and establish a landowner incentive program. This program will help private landowners to protect species while engaging in traditional land management. This means that landowners would be compensated for practices that they cannot accomplish if it endangers the welfare of the ecosystem. 

This ticket would also like to increase logging and road construction in national forests and opposes federal involvement in wilderness and park protection. As many students of Creek Connections know, this land disturbance is going to have direct implications on the survival of clean waterway. If there is increased logging and road construction in the forests, potentially by the waterways, erosion would increase along with the amount of soil, nutrients, and metals entering the waterways. 

Bush may not support the Clean Water Act to the fullest because Texas’ one-third of the 4,400 miles of rivers are so polluted that they fail to meet federal standards. Also, Texas ranked third worst in dumping chemicals into its surface water supply according to the 1999 and 2000 EPA Toxics Release Inventory. In 1998 - the latest data available from the TRI – more than 25 million pounds of pollution were emitted into Texas' rivers, lakes and streams – a two million pound increase from the 1995 TRI data when Bush took office. In 1998, Texas also: had the river with the third most pollution in the country (the Brazos River); ranked third in emitting reproductive toxins to its waterways; and ranked second worst in dumping nitrate compounds into waterways. In 1997, Texas also ranked second worst for emitting known and suspected carcinogens to water in the country. But, according to Bush, 96% of Texas public drinking water meets all standards, up from 88% in 1995. 

George Bush has also had great success with the clean up of “brownfields”(abandoned industrial sites), which can add significant amounts of dangerous toxins to waterways. Texas cleaned up 450 sites and Bush plans to revise the current, slow bureaucracy of cleaning up waste sites – this will likely involve giving states more control over the process and decisions. 

Now let’s examine the Democrat ticket of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman. In Congress, Lieberman voted 100% pro-environment. As a Congressman and as a Senator, Gore voted for clean water legislation and supported funding for the federal clean water program. Al Gore was the original cosponsor of the Water Quality Act of 1987 in which amended the nation's main water pollution control law, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972 (the Clean Water Act). It established a mandatory federal permit program to control discharges of industrial and municipal wastewater, and offered money for sewage plant upgrades and water pollution control programs. Gore has helped lead the Administration’s Safe Water Initiatives by giving $1.9 billion in low interest loans to communities to upgrade water-supplying systems. Also during the Clinton/Gore years, the Safe Drinking Water Act was strengthened to make water utilities inform customers about the quality of their drinking water. You may get this mailing sent to you annually from your water authority. 

This ticket supports the strengthening of the Clean Water Act and investments in clean water. Al Gore will increase funding for clean water programs, tighten standards, and ensure a more comprehensive watershed approach to improve water quality. He would also want to continue to expand existing Conservation Reserve Program that establishes protective buffer strips along waterways and to assist farmers with conservation and environmental efforts. Gore is also in favor of intensifying the Endangered Species Act, while enlisting the participation of private landowners in habitat protection measures under the ESA. This ticket wants to educate people about the importance of the environment and the need for protecting it. 

Bush’s main critique on Gore’s environmental stance is his support of Washington’s heavily controlled and ineffective regulation. Governor Bush recognizes the United States is entering “a new era of environmental policy that requires a new philosophy of public stewardship and personal responsibility. The current regulatory system has produced immense benefits, but it encourages Americans to do the bare minimum, fails to reward innovation, and breeds wasteful litigation.” For instance, Bush points out that fear of Superfund liability and litigation has actually impeded the clean up and redevelopment of abandoned, contaminated industrial facilities, known as brownfields, that may be releasing toxins into our land and water resources. 

There is no doubt that both candidates are interested in protecting our waterways, but the differences occur in the approach to protection, the level of involvement of the Federal Government, and possibly the priority of water protection. We have limited our focus of this article on the candidates’ positions on water, after all we are Creek Connections.There a more environmental issues that part of the candidate's differing environmental platforms. 

Creekers, although most of you cannot vote yet, you and others deserve to know what the candidates may do to our waterways and how they plan to protect them in general. 2 To Find Out More Information Check out The References for this Article: EPA, "1997 Toxics Release Inventory State Fact Sheets," 4/99 www.epa.gov/tri/; EPA, "1998 Toxics Release Inventory," 5/00; Environmental Defense Fund scorecards, http://scorecard.org; Pesticide & Toxic Chemical News, 9/17/98; Environmental Issues, www.algore2000.com, George W. Bush, www.georgewbush.com ) 

Mrs. Jacob’s and Mr. Holt’s classes at Conneaut Lake High School attempted a project never done by any Creek schools in the past - a mark and recapture study using crayfish. Often it is impossible to directly count all the organisms in a habitat to determine the size of a population. In these cases, an estimate of the population size can be made by marking a segment of population at one time, and then later coming back and recapturing the organisms. Thus the name “mark and recapture.” A ratio of marked to unmarked individuals in the second sampling (recapturing) can be used to estimate the total number of organisms in the population. 

The students captured all the crayfish they could in a stretch of stream, with lots of nets and rock overturning. They marked the crayfish with nail polish, on their backs, not on their nails. Two weeks later they came back to recapture. Only a few marked crayfish were found out of the thirty or so found that day. This either suggests that the population is really big or the marked crayfish were washed away; there were rains and high flows in the creek during the study weeks unfortunately. The students will likely present this research at the Student Research Symposium this spring. It was definitely a unique way to learn how to determine population sizes. 

-by Lisa Flinn

It’s autumn! The leaves are ready to fall, but have you ever thought of where they go once they “fall?” Do they just get blown into the neighbor’s yard? Actually, leaves serve a very special purpose to the ecosystems in which they fall. Leaves collect in streams after falling from trees that line the stream (riparian zones) or from the blowing wind which carries leaves from land to water. The result: new housing for macro-invertebrates, immediate food for fungi and bacteria and a cascading food supply for other macro-invertebrates. 

To begin with, clumps of fallen leaves are packed together by the current of a stream. Generally an immovable force, such as a rock or a branch or a log is responsible for stopping the leaves and clustering them together. Fungi and bacteria begin at once to break down the organic matter in the leaves. They will turn the organic matter into ammonia, which will combine with oxygen to form nitrites and nitrates. Now aquatic plants can absorb nitrogen in the form of nitrates through their roots. When your school is testing for nitrates, be sure to observe any changes from month to month, because it could be due to the amount of leaves (and other organics) being decomposed in the water. 

While the leaves at this point are providing an energy source to the bacteria and fungi, they are also sheltering many other organisms. Since most macro-invertebrates cannot battle the strength of the current in a stream it is necessary that they cling onto something. Fallen leaves provide an excellent habitat with many open areas perfect for the influx of oxygenated water and food particles. 

Some macro-invertebrates also use their homes as a food source like crayfish and snails, but “leaves can be difficult to digest and can lack essential nutrients, therefore, may not meet the dietary requirements of freshwater macro-invertebrates that consume leaves. The fungi and bacteria that colonize leaves provide essential supplements to the macro-invertebrate diet” (LaMotte Leaf Pack Experiments Kit Instructions Manual). 

From this point on, a series of functional feeding groups (groups based on diet and feeding adaptation) are responsible for breaking down the course particulate organic matter or CPOM into smaller and smaller parts. The shredders, composed of craneflies, some caddisflies, stoneflies, sowbugs, and scuds, are the first group to break down the CPOM. 

It is the collectors’ turn next to either filter or gather the fine particulate organic matter or FPOM as it floats downstream. Mayflies and midges gather, while blackflies and net-spinning caddisflies filter the FPOM. The grazers or scrapers, like some caddisflies, waterpennies, certain mayflies and midges, feed on algae, another type of FPOM, that grow on the surface of rocks. All of these different levels of workers are sources of food for the predators, such as the dragonfly or the dobsonfly (hellgrammite). It is amazing to see to how every part of the leaf is used to feed macro-invertebrates down the stream. It is also amazing to note how organisms fill different niches, thereby creating an aquatic web or life. “Ecologically, the macro-invertebrates are a primary link between the base of the food chain (algae, detritus, microorganisms) and larger animals such as fish” (LaMotte Leaf Pack Experiments Kit Instructions Manual). 

Is there a way leaves will breakdown quicker? Yes, for instance, if the temperature is warmer, it is more likely that the leaves will breakdown quicker, since cold water slows down the metabolic rates of aquatic life and slows decomposition. Also, leaves breakdown more quickly in nutrient-rich systems, since there would be an abundance of life to start off with that would take part in the decomposition process. 

If the pH of a stream is too low, or too acidic, it inhibits microorganisms and the leaves will not be decomposed as quickly. Further, the actual make-up of the leaf determines how quickly it will decompose. “Non-woody plant leaves [i.e. weeds, flowering plants] decompose much more quickly, on average than do leaves of woody plants [i.e. trees]...” (Allen, 111). Generally, this is 65 days versus 200 days, respectively. 

So when you are out sampling next time, take a moment to enjoy the beauty of fall and think about the amazing trip a single leaf can make to house, feed, and energize an ecosystem. . References: Allen, D.J., (1995). Stream Ecology; Structure and function of running waters. Kluwer Academic Publishers. LaMotte Company. (no date). Leaf Pack Experiments: Stream Ecology Kit Instructions Manual. LaMotte Company.