Crazy week!

Alyson Stepina
week of Feb 24-28

This was a very busy week. It started out Tuesday morning when Dr. Entrekin, Kell and I went to Maumelle Middle school. We were able to meet with the middle school kids for the first time. We were able to talk to them and try and figure out their ultimate goal and teach them some things about the data they were collecting. We spent a lot of time talking about turbidity and the importance of it. We were also able to talk to them about our project which was exciting. After our visit the three of us decided that it would be good to come up with some back ground questions for them to answer before we went back again. Our plan is to go back this Thursday and go over those questions and start to work on their presentation boards.

Tuesday night I went to the Conway watershed meeting Josh and Grace were also there. During the meeting the official name was decided, Lake Conway Point Removed Watershed Alliance. They started the meeting with a recap so we were able to understand where they were. The UA representative went over a 9-element plan and what it was. Then we were numbered off and did group activity. Each group was supposed to decide what they wanted the watershed to look like in 15 years and what some of their concerns were. Somehow because I was the youngest they made me be the person to write and speak for the group. The five things my group came up with were: water depth, flood control, vegetation removal/ balance, recreation, renewed interest (game and fish commission, public, and other organizations). Next we went over the different types of exec boards that the group could have. A committee was made to construct a mission statement and potentially come up with some bi-laws to go over at the next meeting. The next meeting will occur on March 25^th at 6pm at the nature resource center. It was very interesting to see the steps that you have to go through to start up an organization like this.

Friday the whole class went out to collect samples. Allyn came out to help Grace and Grey with HGM and Dr. Entrekin helped Josh, Ali and I with collecting our samples. Friday went well we were able to collect samples from the degraded site and pre-impact 1. Since Kyle could not collect his bird data he helped me collect my data since it takes a lot of hands! At the degraded site we ran into problems finding the different categories we were using so we ended up omitting a category.

Saturday morning Josh and I met on campus at 6:30 and gathered all of our supplies. Then we met Kyle at the end of the road to collect the bird data. We went to all four sites and did 10 minute counts for the birds. It was interesting that even though all of our sites are relatively close they each had a different species that was predominate. Then at the control and the pre-impact 2 we changed the cameras for Ali. Kyle stayed and helped us collect samples t the control which was nice because Josh and I both need two sets of hands. After the control we went back to pre-impact 2 and collected samples there. We did the water quality first and then my macroinvertebrates. Josh and I helping each other help to make sure that we did not muck up each other’s water since we both need the water to not be disturbed before we take our samples. Collecting was a really good experience other than when I fell in the water. It was nice to actually go out and experience collecting after we have talked about the processes for so long. All together it was a very busy week but I think it was very successful.

This next week we will go back to the middle school as well as start to analyze our data in the lab and see what we actually have.