Welcome to the seventh school year of Creek Connections. Already the year has proven to be full of activity and excitement with interesting classroom presentations about Creek Connections, trips to creeks to do chemical and biological work, and some great ideas being generated about waterway research projects. The schools participating in Creek Connections have begun their year-long educational journey to learn more about their local waterways.

Each year, 2,500 secondary school students from throughout Western Pennsylvania and Southwestern New York participate in the Creek Connections program. It has always been the project’s goal to create a unique learning adventure, with hands-on (and maybe even muddy) investigations of streams and rivers near your school. There is nothing wrong with having some fun while you are doing this, and maybe in the end, everyone gains a stronger appreciation for water resources. Water testing, research projects, classroom activities, working with Allegheny College staff, and opportunities to share what you have learned about your creek – that is what Creek Connections is all about.

Creek Connections can definitely generate some excitement in the classroom. “It is great to see students that were not originally excited about checking out their creeks be the first ones that jump into hip waders and get into the water,” says Creek Connections Project Assistant Sarah Falkowski. Perhaps there is no better way to spend a fall day in a science class than working together on the shores of your creek.

Since school began, many students have been the recipients of an official Introduction to Creek Connections by Allegheny College students and staff. This interactive classroom presentation outlines the typical school year for students and introduces various useful watershed concepts. Hopefully, no student left the presentation without being able to define a watershed, and without having a little fun spraying our 3-D watershed model. Students also explored the fact that water does not stay on the land surface alone; there is also groundwater flow. It is amazing how much you can learn from some red food coloring being injected into a plastic model filled with sand and gravel.

In the year ahead, students are encouraged to discover more about the factors that influence water quality in their watershed. All students do this by conducting ongoing water quality monitoring of their waterway site. Using chemical tests, they may discover how water parameter levels change throughout the year, perhaps jumping to unsafe levels. In addition to being chemists, the students will have to be true scientists by designing and implementing research projects pertaining to their creek. These projects cover all sorts of interesting topics from bacteria to birds, nitrates to newts, habitats to history. At the end of the school year, schools will be invited to a Student Research Symposium, an event where students have an opportunity to showcase their research projects and monitoring results.

This year there are over 40 schools participating in Creek Connections with half the schools found in Northwest Pennsylvania and Southwest New York, and the other half found in the Pittsburgh area. One of the interesting things about Creek Connections nowadays is the variety of waterways that schools choose to sample. Perhaps your school is a French Creek sampling team, or you investigate a small stream subjected to some sewage inputs or agricultural runoff, or you sample a nice forested stream. Maybe you are a Pittsburgher sampling one of the three rivers or a small tributary to one of them. And possibly everyone will discover how their stream differs from other school’s waterways.

Creek Connections hopes you enjoy learning about the scientific story of your waterway this upcoming year and have the chance to share your findings with other participating schools or people in your community. We also want you to have some fun while learning. Best of luck in the year ahead with your water monitoring and research projects.

-By Laura Tingley and Chris Resek

What better way to start off a school year than to get into a stream to study it, but to also take some action to improve its quality?

Sugar Grove Elementary School, a new school with Creek Connections, recently participated in some streamside restoration work under the direction and funding of the Warren County Conservation District. Teacher Susan Howe started to collaborate the streamside work last year with the conservation district and Allegheny College. She feels that this project gives students exposure to waterways that some would have never experienced otherwise. And perhaps Stillwater Creek will benefit as well.

According to Matt Burlingame of the Warren County Conservation District, the waterway in the past had commonly undergone dredging to control flooding, and the stream channel has undergone so much alteration and erosion that the natural dynamics of the stream have been destroyed. The hope is that the Sugar Grove effort and other future efforts can help stabilize the stream banks and channel, and create some fish habitat.

So what did the forty sixth graders do at the beginning of their school year? They cut out invasive plants and made way for native species. These terrific students planted willow seedlings and pounded in willow stakes (sections of willow branches that will hopefully root) on the creek banks in hopes that the willows will grow into trees and act as a sun block for the creatures that have made their home in the creek. They want to be able to fish in the creek someday and hope that cooling down the water will create a better habitat for trout and other fish. But that is not all this class did in one afternoon.

They also laid the groundwork to create artificial pools so that the aquatic life can find calmer water within the creek. With bare hands and muscle, they created this pool using tree logs to create a V-shaped cross vein. Downstream of the “V”, a pool will develop. The water is slowed upstream, to allow sediments to settle out and reshape the stream to a more natural channel. While the boys carried the logs down the bank to the creek, the girls were busy making a trench for the log to fit snug into the creek bed. When the logs were secured into place, the students barricaded the logs with rocks so that they would not float away.

This was awesome work that the class did and Laura Tingley, Allegheny student, felt lucky enough to be part of the restoration effort. She stated, “seeing students that are helping improve the environment because they want to is very impressive. As an environmental science major, I read a lot about the needs to address environmental problems, and these students are a great success story for actually trying to make a difference themselves”.

Matt Burlingame thought the students did very well. He indicated “a little concern about them moving large logs around, but they jumped right in, got wet and dirty, and did a great job.”

This is not the only project that Sugar Grove has planned for this year. Other events include a groundwater day, macroinvertebrate work, more streamside restoration work, and not to mention an end of year Creek Connections science fair in collaboration with another area school.

And what do the sixth graders feel about this? The sixth graders at Sugar Grove Elementary are so excited to show others what they are learning about waterways that they cannot wait for upcoming events. They not only want to learn what lives in the water but also what impact humans and other animals have on the waterway. Hopefully, they realize they are helping to make a positive impact on their local waterway.

-by Laura Branby and Chris Resek

For many years, Mr. Vogler’s Moon Area High School students start off their school year by investigating their whole watershed in a day. They did it again on September 7th. Stopping at six sites in the Montour Run Watershed, west of Pittsburgh, they conducted chemistry tests, did some biological investigations, and made unique discoveries along the way.

This watershed is home to the old and new Pittsburgh International Airports, so the students usually end up investigating how all the regional asphault may influence their creeks. The creek sites that they explore are nestled between interstates and shopping malls, hotels and runways, and wooded areas and homes.

One site that the students call “volcano” has some strange geologic features - terraces that the students like to climb on. At another site this time, they discovered what they thought was some natural gas entering directly into the stream. With bubbles surfacing here and there in the creek, the students unsuccessfully took to the challenge of capturing some natural gas in their sample bottles.

At one site, students did some kick netting to see what aqautic macroinvertebrates were present. The most facinating bugs turned out to be terrestrial though. Two mating ladybugs captured the attention of the students. The trip was not complete without a biological rescue of sorts as well. At Enlow, students found two small snakes caught in an onion sack bag and worked with small scissors to cut the bag and free the snakes. Another good deed done by Creek Connections students.

Because they sample so many sites and conduct chemical tests not done by other schools, Moon Area High School’s data is compiled on a separate database on the Creek Connections website. Check it out to see how well they did on their watershed snapshot.

Any aquatic creature that calls its home McLaughlin Run was probably captured on September 19th by eight different Upper St. Clair High School classes. Each year, all of Mr. Callahan’s and Mr. Zebo’s biology classes get into the creek to study the aquatic life. Interestingly, they can compare the types and number of aquatic macroinvertebrates from previous year’s investigations.

Through discussions, their chemical monitoring, and site investigations, the USC students will learn about the stream requirements that will enable aquatic macroinvertebrates to live and thrive in a waterway - sufficient chemical parameters (dissolved oxygen, pH, etc.) and also sufficient habitat. A more diverse array of insects will find homes under “unsilty” rocks of faster stretches of waterways.

Upper St. Clair will share their findings at the annual Student Research Symposium and may post their findings on their website: http://www.campusnews.f2s.com/creekconnections/

Conneaut Lake High School is at it again - catching all the crayfish that they can. Just like last year, Mr. Holt’s students are conducting 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.

On September 25th, the students captured all the crayfish they could in a stretch of stream. In the classroom, they marked the crayfish with nail polish on their abdomens. Then they were released back to the stream. In a few weeks, the students will return to the creek to recapture as many crayfish as possible in the same location.

The students also collected macroinvertebrates during the class and identified them the next day in lab. The diversity of aquatic insects in a stream can help determine its health. The students will likely present this research at the Student Research Symposium this spring and hopefully submit their findings to the newsletter with a little background information about crayfish.

This is a unique research project for the ecology class and a great way to learn about population studies and methods.

NW PA / French Creek Schools

Conneaut Valley High School is taking an in depth look at the Conneaut Creek Watershed. They are approaching their research from three vantage points. So far, the class has gone out twice. The first test day they became familiar with the process, collected sample water, and were able to collect aquatic macroinvertebrates with a Serber sampler. The following week they viewed their creatures under microscopes. The second test day the class began the field site survey for one of the three site - Dicksonburg site. The class will complete the field site survey of all three sites this semester, with some topographic map work next semester.

Sherman Central School has been hard at work learning about the watershed concept, water movement, how to do the chemical tests in the classroom, and how to head off to French Creek to sample. Sherman’s site is at the uppermost headwaters of French Creek, upstream of ALL other participating schools.

Mrs. Jacob’s 7th grade Life Science class at Conneaut Lake Jr. High School is checking out two sites this year. One is a slow moving, sediment filled stream entering Geneva Marsh, and the other site is in the middle of the marsh itself. The students did a great job of doing their tests correctly, even knowing to do additional trials when their results were not similar enough. This class should have some fun learning more about the biodiversity and health of Geneva Marsh, the largest wetland in Pennsylvania.

SW PA / Pittsburgh Area Schools

The students in Mr. Miller's class at Brashear High School are having fun testing a new site this year. They are investigation the water quality of Squaw Run near Fox Chapel in Pittsburgh, which flows into the Allegheny River. Recently, the students completed their first round of chemical sampling. They also took the time to search for creek life. They were all excited to see the number small fish and insects that their small stream can support. Hopefully this year, even the students that claimed that they "were not nature people" will eagerly get into the water when they find out how interesting the creek really is.

Emily Brittain Elementary School is also investigating a new stream - a nice wooded stream behind Jennings Environmental Center. The stream is being treated for acid mine drainage and on their first trip the students learned about the history of the area and how the water is being treated. Maybe the treatment is working because they had a pH result of 7.1, almost neutral, and no iron in their water. Acid mine drainage will lower the pH and can contain high levels of metal. The students will be keeping an eye on these parameters throughout the year and investigate how well the creek supports aquatic life.

 

Emily Brittian students, parents, and teachers have a great time sampling.

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