Stream Health Evaluation Project kicks off monitoring season

The Rice Creek Watershed Stream Health Evaluation Program (or RCWD SHEP, for those of you who love acronyms) kicked off last month with our field-training event at the Wargo Nature Center in Lino Lakes.

In 2006, FMR launched the Stream Health Evaluation Program (SHEP) in the Rice Creek Watershed District. SHEP was designed to recruit, train and coordinate teams of citizen volunteers in using bioassessment protocols developed by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to evaluate stream sampling sites within the rapidly urbanizing Rice Creek Watershed.

The program has returned in 2007, and 26 local residents participated in this years first training session. These SHEP>ers spent the day learning the ins and outs of stream morphology, benthic macroinvertebrates and modern stream sampling how-to. They were joined by SHEPs field trainers: the Minnesota Pollution Control Agencys Joel Chirhardt and Minnesota Waters Angie Becker-Kudelka and Courtney Kowalczak.

After a morning of classroom education, volunteers donned waders and descended into Clearwater Creek to learn MPCA protocols for collecting macroinvertebrates from streams. Because these bugs live in the stream year-round, they are an excellent indicator of stream health. Healthy streams produce healthy bugs. Unhealthy streams produce less diverse and less healthy macroinvertebrate populations. These stream-dwelling bug samples are then taken to the lab and analyzed to determine the health of the streams they call home.

Over the coming weeks, these SHEPers will break into teams and sample six sites in the Rice Creek Watershed. Sampling sites this year include Hardwood Creek, Clearwater Creek, Rice Creek and the Locke Lake area. Samples will be stored and then analyzed during laboratory sessions this fall. Once those results are determined, SHEPers will assign a score to each stream site in an effort to determine whether or not recent restoration activities and stormwater management projects are making a positive impact of the health of the RCWDs streams.

For more info on the RCWD, visit their web site.