Saegertown 7th Grade Creek Day Covers Many Topics

Upper St. Clair Students Meet McLaughlin Run Macros

Want to stand in a creek catching a crayfish and maybe a dobsonfly larva? Want to figure out how the silver maple trees along your creek are helping to keep it clean? Want to discover if your creek’s dissolved oxygen levels are high enough to support a trout population? Allegheny College created a project called Creek Connections in 1995 so that regional middle and high school students could do these types of things. Today, 3,000 new Creek Connections students investigate and conduct research on their local waterways annually. This year, 52 teachers from 43 schools in Western Pennsylvania and Chautauqua County New York are participating in Creek Connections.

Creek Connections welcomes all participating schools to our 8th year of watershed education. For most schools, the water monitoring is well underway. A year’s worth of water chemistry data is starting to be collected and compiled. Many of our schools are already busy learning about creeks and being visited by Allegheny College students and permanent staff.

In September, Allegheny College students and permanent staff had already made 47 visits to schools. These visits have included Interactive Introductions to Creek Connections presentations, water quality monitoring assistance, various aquatic life investigations, and other types of classroom presentations or activities. The “creekers” have traveled as far away as Clymer, New York and as close as Meadville Middle to help schools embark on their watershed education endeavors. Laura Branby, our Pittsburgh Field Educator, has been assisting schools in Southwest Pennsylvania.

“It has been a fun year so far, getting out and helping schools start up their creek adventures,” says Creek Connections Project Assistant, Ellen Smith. A sophomore at Allegheny, Ellen is one of fifteen “creekers” on staff

Throughout this school year, each participating school will have the opportunity to monitor a chosen, local waterway using chemical tests and some observational exercises. Most schools also conduct biological monitoring of their waterways, discovering how many different types of aquatic life their creek supports.

Each participating school will also design and implement research projects about their waterways that might incorporate some academic research, field work, and creation of display presentations. If students do a good job on their creek research, they may be invited to attend a Student Research Symposium in April to showcase their work. Representatives from all participating schools attend the event to share their water monitoring results and their research projects. The day is filled with lots of colorful and educational displays from students and environmental organizations. Here, students also participate in hands-on activities about water-related topics.

We hope that all of our participating schools enjoy learning about their waterways, their health, their threats, their aquatic life, and their importance. Take advantage of this opportunity to spend time outside the classroom studying an important natural resource – water. Observe how your waterway changes over the seasons and discover how easy it is for humans to impact waterways. In the year ahead, maybe you will even discover how you can protect a local stream. Most of all, have some fun with this great learning experience. Good luck!

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One of the unique aspects of Creek Connections is the involvement of schools from two different regions of Pennsylvania – the more rural, less populated French Creek Watershed and neighboring watersheds of Northwest Pennsylvania and the more populated, urbanized Pittsburgh area. These two regions have different water quality issues that we hope you learn more about in the year ahead. You might discover which region is more affected by acid mine drainage, more affected by agricultural runoff, more affected by suburban sprawl, more affected by faulty sewage systems. As a result of differing land uses and human impacts on the waterways, the aquatic life surviving in a stream differs as well.

So if a Pittsburgh school wanted to witness some great biodiversity (different living organisms) in a stream, they might want to travel north to the French Creek watershed to find a good stream to explore. Ellis School did this.

In mid September, the Ellis School from Pittsburgh traveled to Northwest Pennsylvania to explore various environmental topics and conduct field research. For the fourth consecutive year, one of their stops was French Creek for an aquatic life investigation and waterway assessment. Forty-two girls had the chance to discover first hand the rich biodiversity of French Creek at Bicentennial Park in Meadville.

With kick nets in hand, the girls caught plenty of aquatic macroinvertebrates, including lots of pollution sensitive bugs like mayfly nymphs, giant stonefly nymphs, water pennies, and riffle beetles. A few different types of fish were caught including some darters, which typically prefer cleaner water, and some minnows. This was just a small subset of the 80 different fish species found in the French Creek Watershed. Some of these, such as the Gravel Chub and Spotted Darter, are on the U.S. Endangered Species List. The Ellis students also found some live and empty shell freshwater mussels. French Creek is lucky to have 26 different types of freshwater mussels, including the endangered Northern Riffleshell and Clubshell. Lastly, many different types of aquatic plants and algae were still thriving in the creek and some students discovered that this vegetation provides habitat for even more types of aquatic organisms.

Ellis students pick the last of the mayfly nymphs off their kick net.

“Each year we enjoy hosting the Ellis girls and giving them the chance to see how different French Creek is compared to the waterway they test – the Allegheny River in downtown Pittsburgh,” claimed Chris Resek, Project Coordinator for Creek Connections.

The Ellis girls will compare the insects they caught in French Creek with ones they will catch in the Allegheny River later this school year. In addition, Ellis usually makes some very thorough water chemistry comparisons between their site and other sites monitored by our Northwest Pennsylvania schools.

Again this year, the Ellis School enjoyed their time at French Creek. They had fun strapping on hipwaders, kick netting, taking a close look at their organisms, and witnessing the concept of biodiversity first hand.

Upper St. Clair Students Meet McLaughlin Run Macros

For Upper St. Clair students each fall, catching various types of minnows is always a favorite. Observing the delicate damselfly nymphs under a microscope always sparks a new fascination. Watching a scud (sideswimmer) scoot around the white sorting tray in its unique sideways swimming style turns out to be entertaining.

These creatures, obtained from McLaughlin Run just down the hill from their school, were the focus of each new class, each period on October 3. Over 160 students participated in the day. They learned about the different ways to analyze a stream to determine its health, viewed various sampling methods to collect aquatic insects, and then attempted to find as much biodiversity in their creek as possible. Finding good biodiversity would indicate that their stream is healthy enough and has the appropriate habitats to support a variety of aquatic life. The students can relate their findings to the water chemistry testing that they do on other days, determining if the parameters are in ranges appropriate to support aquatic organisms.

Through explorations of the creek, the Upper St. Clair students also began to recognize the habitat requirements for some aquatic insects. A larger variety prefer well oxygenated riffles with clean rocks to cling to or to live under rather than the muddy, sediment filled, deeper pools. McLaughlin Run also has stretches that the solid bedrock bottom (large flat rocks) is exposed, providing no habitats for aquatic insects.

The next day in lab, the students took a closer look at the aquatic insects that they caught, identified them, and recorded their data so that it could be compared to other years. Additionally, the students had a sample of aquatic insects taken from the French Creek to explore. Hopefully the students enjoyed their time at the creek and learned many new facts about some of the aquatic creatures in their McLaughlin Run.

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