Yesterday, 3/27/2012, the water quality group measured phosphate levels in the water samples taken from all of the creeks by adding reagents to 10 mL of water and using a spectrophotometer to measure phosphate levels. We worked in class for about 1 hour and then again from 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. and were able to finish all of the phosphate levels in the samples. Overall it seems that phosphate levels were found in relatively higher amounts than compared to nitrate levels. We still are needing to test for ammonium levels whihc we will be doing this Friday.

Bugs from Winifree and Unnamed Trib

The Invertebrate group has just finished keying out all of the bugs collected from all six sites.  Thursday we will begin analyzing our data.  Here are a few of the outstanding specimens we had.  In particular, note the gravid amphipod.  

the entire environmental practicum class was able to attend the steering committee on Friday march 16, and I feel it was pretty productive. We were only there from 2:00 till around three. I think attending was helpful because we were able to listen to different opinions, such as developers and city officials. These opinions will be helpful in better preparing ourselves for our final presentations and addressing all opposing sentiments. We were also given homework in which we are supposed to rate the social factors surrounding a bayou in order to determine its importance.

Steering Committe Meeting and Data Collection

Today we all attended a Steering Committee Meeting in Maumelle.  The meeting was very interesting and we even received homework from Scott!  Each group spoke about their part of the project and the committee was very impresed.  The meeting started at 2 p.m. and we all were dismissed at 3 p.m. 

Carolyn and myself finished up the canopy cover and discharge results at the three streams in Maumelle.  Since we were at the Country Club site, we started there right after the meeting.  We worked our way back to the other two streams and finished collecting data at 4:30.  We will be inputing and processing data during spring break and hope to have all data sheets completed by the next week.

Water Quality Progress

We are currently working on processing our data. After three class periods, we have finally finished measuring the nitrate concentration in our samples. We haven't entered or analyzed the data yet, but we suspect the results will be much lower than expected due the the low sensitivity of our methods. Our algae and leaf litter is dried and we now need to use the muffle furnace to determine how much of our samples is organic matter and how much is just sediment. We did begin entering data in class today. I don't know what Marissa and Travis's results for temperature and turbidity were, but the results for turbidity were not statistically significant. I hypothesized that urban streams would be more turbid than urban streams due to decreased canopy cover, vegetation, and species diversity. If you just look at the data in more detail it is clear that the urban streams are more turbid. However, due to the extreme turbidity of the urban stream by the baseball complex, there was a very large standard error. I think the plan is to start measuring phosphate levels next week since we will be attending the steering committee meeting tomorrow.

Just finished sorting and identifying invertebrates from four of our samples.  Here are a few cool pictures I was able to take.  

 The Geomorphology group is almost done. On March 9th we finished collecting data on the forested head water streams. it took us about three hours, but we stopped to identify herps along the way  We just have to finish canopy cover and velocity for the three urban streams We plan to gather canopy cover and velocity this friday. Then we will enter our data and begin to calculate stream sinuosity on ArcMap.

Invert & Diatom

Due to the rainy weather over the weekend, we were not able to do our sampling at the last 2 remaining creeks in camp Robinson on Monday.  Now we have made plans to do these sites on Friday, hopefully before our steering meeting.  The weather shows 60% chance of rain on Wednesday and Thursday, maybe that will go around us.  We have been working hard on getting our specimens I.D. and we should have them done except for the last 2 creeks by spring break. 

Last Friday March 9, the water quality group went out into the field and finished all of the field sampling for our group. We took storm flow samples and readings from all 6 of the creeks. Today we continued processing some of our water samples for nitrate levels within them and finished processing all of the nitrates. We still need to process the water samples for phosphates as well as determine the mass of the leaf litter and the algae that was collected from all of the streams. This Friday we are planning on meeting the Maumelle Steering Committee to present to them what this project is and how it pertains to them.

Finishing up field work

Today we talked about the data that we have collected so far in the White Oak Bayou.  This Friday we will attend the Maumelle steering committee meeting and discuss our progress so far.  Carolyn and I will complete our final collection of canopy cover and discharge rate in Maumelle after the meeting and will finish our data sheets. 

Processing in going good!

Today, we finished up processing the water samples for nitrates using the Cadmium Powder Pillow. We have Ammonium and Phosphates left to do with our water samples. It seems that we are still (*cough* Travis) (kidding!) filling up our plastic test tubes with too much water, because we had about 6 tubes crack on us from the freezer. But no worries, we just set them in glass jars to catch any water and then transferred those to new plastic tubes. Also, next on our agenda is to use the muffle furnace to separate the algae from the sand/sediment after we dried out our algae samples. Sometimes the algae was just too thin to separate. It seems like we are going right on track.

Greetings everyone, sounds like you are making great progress! With yesterday's rains, flows will be up again. I will be out and about in the watershed this week and will try to post some photos and any other interesting information I may have to share. Thank you so much for all your hard work, I am very interested to see the results of your research. I will be in town all of this week, so let me know if you have any questions or need assistance on anything.

Steering Committee meeting this Friday at 2:00 at the Maumelle Water Management Training facility.

Yesterday Carolyn and myself met with Bruce at Camp Robinson to finish up the streams there.  We were able to finish all the measurements at each stream.  Canopy cover and discharge were determined along with our depth, width, and substrate composition.  The steams were at a higher water level since we last visited them due to the recent storm event.  Data sheets were filled out and will be put into our spread sheets Tuesday.  Need to visit the Maumell sites once more to get canopy cover and discharge rate at each of the streams there.   

Water Quality Sampling -Storm Flow

Well, our wish was granted. Just a week after finishing our base flow sampling we got enough rain to take storm flow samples! Yesterday we went to all of our urban and forested sites. Because we couldn't actually get in the streams, we just took one measurement for pH, conductivity, DO, temperature, and turbidity. We took one water sample to measure nitrates, ammonium, and phosphates in the lab and did not collect leaf litter or algae. Now, we just need to finish processing our data. So far, we have measured nitrates for all of our urban streams. Our algae and leaf litter is dry and ready to be weighed.

This is a good one too!

http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/nps/urban/report.cfm

Here is a great link to resources you could all use
www.arkansaswater.org

Water Quality Continued...

It seemed that the water levels were a little lower than last time, but it shouldn't affect our data. It also seems to be that sampling seems to be so much more easy going and relaxing when the weather is PERFECT. I hope the other groups have found our markers for where the transects start. We forgot to bring flags but we made markers pretty clear, with either rocks stacked or logs put together. As said before, we have all of our base flow data collected. Now let's hope it rains sometime soon where we can all go out... I'm kinda worried since collecting our base flow data was kind of a hassle with having to spread it out a couple days/weeks.

On March 2nd, Misty Siler, Dr. Entrekin, and myself finished finished gathering data on stream width, depth, bank angle, and substrate composition for our three urban stream sites. We plan to finish the rest of our sampling this Friday for the forested head water streams. We saw a lot of interesting critters at our last stream site near the golf course. We saw a cotton mouth snake, several frogs, and even some cedar waxwings.

Thursday and Friday of last week March 1 and 2 the water quality group traveled to the remaining streams for testing. On Thursday we tested the stream located off of Vestal as well as the stream located by the baseball fields within the urban sites. On Friday we finished the urban sites with the stream located near the golf course and moved on to Camp Robinson and finished there by testing Winifree Creek. This concludes the field testing we have for base flow. We still have much lab work testing nitrates, leaf litter, algae, and phosphrus. Also field work for storm flow will still be required testing to see what occurs during a strom flow.

Friday March 2nd the Geomorphology group plus Dr. Sally, visited the urban sites in Maumelle.  We finished gathering data at all three sites.  The sites had changed since the first visit back in February.  The Vestal site water level was lower than before.  The Wetland Trail site was totally full of water!  The Country Club site was very low in water, and we even encountered a copperhead snake within the transect!  Tuesday during class we will meet with Dr. Sally and go over our results and hopefully set up a time to revisit Camp Robinson.  We still need to gather data at Camp Robinson on the last two streams.  Hopefully, we can go there this Friday and wrap up our data collection.

Water Quality: Sampling 3/2/12

Friday, the water quality group FINISHED SAMPLING! At least for base flow. We first to the urban site by a golf course off of Hyman. Everything went very smoothly and we finished quickly. We then called Brian to see if we could go to Camp Robinson and he gave permission. We sampled Winifree, where all went smoothly. Then, we remeasured turbidity for the unnamed tributary, because we stirred up some sediment last time. We will begin our data analysis this week and we will try to sample at storm flow in weeks to come.

Urban stream near golf course of of Hyman

Lots of Algae!

Winifree stream in Camp Robinson

Winifree 1st transect

Travis collecting leaf litter

 Travis collecting leaf litter

 Winifree 2nd transect

Critter hole Winifree 2nd transect

Lee found this sign that had fallen over and was covered with leaves at the Golf Course site.  It reads "Conservation Area"

Urban Sampling: Bug and Diatom Group

Thursday we sampled all of our urban sites.  We were able to move fast through the urban sites because they were considerably easier to get to than the Camp Robinson sites, plus we had a chance to practice our methods at Camp Robinson, which helped speed things up.  We haven't had the chance to look through our urban samples, but at first glance there is an obvious difference in the invertebrate community between our urban and forested sites.  As of now our plan is to spend most of next week in the lab processing the data we have taken so far and then on Friday (Mar 9) we will go back to Camp Robinson and finish sampling Winifree Creek and the unnamed tributary.

Urban Site Sampling 3/1/12

Today we started sampling urban streams. Again, the water quality group finished sampling two streams. The first stream is near an apartment complex off of Vestal Boulevard. This stream was considerably shallower than the first time we saw it. We also did some trash clean-up while we were there, because it was pretty gross. We then moved on to the stream near a new baseball complex. This stream was very deep and muddy, making it hard to navigate. Everything went smoothly again today. Hopefully we will be able to go sample the third stream soon.

Camp Robinson Sampling 2/24/12

Last Friday we visited the forested streams in Camp Robinson. The water quality group finished sampling Newton Creek and the unnamed tributary. We will have to go back soon to sample Winifree Creek. We measured temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, and specific conductivity. We also collected water samples to measure nitrates, ammonium, and phosphorous. We also collected leaf litter and algae to be weighed in the lab. We took 3 samples of everything at 2 randomly selected transects in both streams. Everything went really smoothly. We had no major complications. However, we will need to redo turbidity in the first transect of the unnamed tributary, because we have unusual results that we think are due to our stirring up a lot of sediment in that area.