My boss at RiverNetwork believes that constant computer time is degrading and unhealthy, so in an effort to maintain my positive mental chemistry she set me up with some partnerships outside the office. Since my second week here I've spent 1-3 days a week off site at another organization spending time outside getting my feet wet, as it were. I work with Johnson Creek Watershed, helping out with some of their restoration projects. Since the work i do at River Network is similar to what most other DukeEngagers are doing, I thought it might be a good time to showcase some of the more the more interesting activities Ive been able to participate in.
Photo monitoring:
Photo monitoring is basically a qualitative way of measuring and recording the effectiveness of restoration work. It’s like a giant puzzle. You’re given a map whose scale is of questionable uniformity with the numbered photo points, some descriptions that typically follow along the the lines of “just past small cottonwood tree west of the culvert, look through gap in riparian bank vegetation downstream of riffles”, and maybe a 5 year old photo that invariably bears no resemblance to the place you are currently standing. Then it’s your job to take a picture that reflects the changes and evolution of the stream corridor as proof that restoration work has been doing some good and donors should continue funding Johnson Creek efforts. After that you head back to the office and compile a photo montage that showcases all the photo points year after year. For the most part the montage of a particular photo point just proves that the bush of invasive blackberry you have to stand in to take the snapshot is still thriving and as thorny as ever. However, it’s all worth it when one of your montages manages to tell the dramatic and inspiring story of a creek channel what was little more than a muddy hole in the early 2000s, and now boasts clear water flowing close to 10 cfs (about the flow of a merry little bubbling brook), almost 70% riparian cover (aka shade) along the banks, and thriving communities of lamprey. I spent two days doing this and consider it time well spent.
Hydrology Flow Measurements:
This was an interesting project in the fact that we had a training day with a USGS hydrologic sciences expert, who I talked to extensively about careers in field science and research. He had a lot of fascinating things to say and boy did i take some extensive notes. We were trained to use a flow rate meter, a $20,000 device that is basically a long pole with a sensor on the end that sends out a constant stream of sound waves to analyze flow, measured in cfs (cubic feet per second. everywhere else in the world this is cubic meters per second, but you know America, gotta hang onto our obscure measuring system). Once you get past the cool idea that you basically have an echolocating bat sensor stuck into the stream, this work become very tedious. No single measurement can exceed 5% of the stream’s total volume, which means that for every analysis site, there is a minimum of 20 readings, each of which takes 40 seconds and requires recalibration of the instrument to account for varying depths and bottom obstacles. Although it is interesting to consider that my readings were put into the USGS national streamflow database, and might be used to influence dam operations or fish reintroduction somewhere else in the Willamette river basin, this was essentially watching numbers on a screen tick down to zero, occasionally punctuated by the excitement of an error message, aka cause for doing the entire reading over again.
Fish Salvage:
This was by far the most interesting thing I’ve done with JC. Somewhere along the portion of Johnson creek that runs through Milwaukee, a sewage pipe became exposed and thus structurally compromised, threatening to dump grey water waste into the creek. In order to avoid this catastrophe, the City of Portland environmental services decided that the safest way to deal with the situation was to temporarily divert the creek around the pipe, drain that section, and fix the pipe. However, in the process of doing that, they would kill millions of red sided shiners, sculpin, lamprey, and macroinvertebrates in the compromised section. Fish salvage is essentially an operation in which you catch all these fish in one section of a stream, document them, and dump them out farther downstream, past the point of danger. Fish salvage units are generally teams of 4 to 5 people, one shocker, a couple netters, and the catch bucket transporter. Everyone is familiar with nets and buckets; I’m not going to explain the mechanics of those. It’s the shock backpacks that are the real stars of the show here. This is essentially a giant battery strapped onto someone’s back with 2 components: snaking out of the left hand side of the box is a cable that’s insulated with rubber along ¾ of its length, with 3 feet of exposed metal cable trailing into the water. Attached to the right side is a 4ft long pole with a hoop of metal at the end, resembling a metal detector. These are the electric positive and electric negative ends of the device. You set the contraption to a certain voltage, stick the two ends into the water and a strong current flows in an arc between the two ends, zapping the fish. If the shock expert has set it at the optimum voltage, the charge stuns the smaller fish, confuses and slows the larger fish, jolts the lampreys, and just pisses off the crawdads. At that point, netters (my job) follow close behind and to the sides of the shocker collecting the fish that are scared out of their hiding places by the giant lightning storm happening in their yard or else dazedly float up to the surface in varying levels of stunned existence. This is extremely gratifying and exciting, because each charge only affords a short window of time for catching the fish before they regain full mental functioning and speeds, so netters have to be constantly alert and must rely on quick reflexes to catch the fish we are trying to save. I came away at the end of the day having caught the most lampreys out of anyone, which is a tiny freshwater eel fish, thus forever cementing my place in the upper echelons of the elite freshwater restoration netting world.
Alexa
Photo monitoring:
Photo monitoring is basically a qualitative way of measuring and recording the effectiveness of restoration work. It’s like a giant puzzle. You’re given a map whose scale is of questionable uniformity with the numbered photo points, some descriptions that typically follow along the the lines of “just past small cottonwood tree west of the culvert, look through gap in riparian bank vegetation downstream of riffles”, and maybe a 5 year old photo that invariably bears no resemblance to the place you are currently standing. Then it’s your job to take a picture that reflects the changes and evolution of the stream corridor as proof that restoration work has been doing some good and donors should continue funding Johnson Creek efforts. After that you head back to the office and compile a photo montage that showcases all the photo points year after year. For the most part the montage of a particular photo point just proves that the bush of invasive blackberry you have to stand in to take the snapshot is still thriving and as thorny as ever. However, it’s all worth it when one of your montages manages to tell the dramatic and inspiring story of a creek channel what was little more than a muddy hole in the early 2000s, and now boasts clear water flowing close to 10 cfs (about the flow of a merry little bubbling brook), almost 70% riparian cover (aka shade) along the banks, and thriving communities of lamprey. I spent two days doing this and consider it time well spent.
Hydrology Flow Measurements:
This was an interesting project in the fact that we had a training day with a USGS hydrologic sciences expert, who I talked to extensively about careers in field science and research. He had a lot of fascinating things to say and boy did i take some extensive notes. We were trained to use a flow rate meter, a $20,000 device that is basically a long pole with a sensor on the end that sends out a constant stream of sound waves to analyze flow, measured in cfs (cubic feet per second. everywhere else in the world this is cubic meters per second, but you know America, gotta hang onto our obscure measuring system). Once you get past the cool idea that you basically have an echolocating bat sensor stuck into the stream, this work become very tedious. No single measurement can exceed 5% of the stream’s total volume, which means that for every analysis site, there is a minimum of 20 readings, each of which takes 40 seconds and requires recalibration of the instrument to account for varying depths and bottom obstacles. Although it is interesting to consider that my readings were put into the USGS national streamflow database, and might be used to influence dam operations or fish reintroduction somewhere else in the Willamette river basin, this was essentially watching numbers on a screen tick down to zero, occasionally punctuated by the excitement of an error message, aka cause for doing the entire reading over again.
Fish Salvage:
This was by far the most interesting thing I’ve done with JC. Somewhere along the portion of Johnson creek that runs through Milwaukee, a sewage pipe became exposed and thus structurally compromised, threatening to dump grey water waste into the creek. In order to avoid this catastrophe, the City of Portland environmental services decided that the safest way to deal with the situation was to temporarily divert the creek around the pipe, drain that section, and fix the pipe. However, in the process of doing that, they would kill millions of red sided shiners, sculpin, lamprey, and macroinvertebrates in the compromised section. Fish salvage is essentially an operation in which you catch all these fish in one section of a stream, document them, and dump them out farther downstream, past the point of danger. Fish salvage units are generally teams of 4 to 5 people, one shocker, a couple netters, and the catch bucket transporter. Everyone is familiar with nets and buckets; I’m not going to explain the mechanics of those. It’s the shock backpacks that are the real stars of the show here. This is essentially a giant battery strapped onto someone’s back with 2 components: snaking out of the left hand side of the box is a cable that’s insulated with rubber along ¾ of its length, with 3 feet of exposed metal cable trailing into the water. Attached to the right side is a 4ft long pole with a hoop of metal at the end, resembling a metal detector. These are the electric positive and electric negative ends of the device. You set the contraption to a certain voltage, stick the two ends into the water and a strong current flows in an arc between the two ends, zapping the fish. If the shock expert has set it at the optimum voltage, the charge stuns the smaller fish, confuses and slows the larger fish, jolts the lampreys, and just pisses off the crawdads. At that point, netters (my job) follow close behind and to the sides of the shocker collecting the fish that are scared out of their hiding places by the giant lightning storm happening in their yard or else dazedly float up to the surface in varying levels of stunned existence. This is extremely gratifying and exciting, because each charge only affords a short window of time for catching the fish before they regain full mental functioning and speeds, so netters have to be constantly alert and must rely on quick reflexes to catch the fish we are trying to save. I came away at the end of the day having caught the most lampreys out of anyone, which is a tiny freshwater eel fish, thus forever cementing my place in the upper echelons of the elite freshwater restoration netting world.
Alexa