GREENWOOD — Since 1996, the Hoosier Riverwatch program has trained volunteers throughout the state to monitor river water. Friday was the latest class in Greenwood.
Pleasant Creek was filled with future volunteers. They spent the first half of the day in the classroom, followed by fieldwork, more like "creekwork" in this case, on Friday afternoon.
Dylan Allison with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management is the coordinator for the Hoosier Riverwatch program. He was today's instructor.
"Having a volunteer group be able to go out into areas that aren't able to be reached by IDEM staff, it really just helps us fill in the gaps," Allison explained.
Allison explains what kind of information the volunteers are providing to IDEM.
"We're looking for any data we can get!" exclaimed Allison.
He went on to describe the three big categories that volunteers are monitoring are water chemistry, biology and habitat makeup.
Volunteers were taught to examine what kind of ground they were standing on while wading into the creek. They looked at whether the creek was straight or winding. They also looked along the banks to determine what was surrounding the water.
All observations were marked onto Allison's data collection sheet on his clipboard. Data like this will be logged in the future by the volunteers after they complete the class.
Volunteers took measurements of the depth and width of the water to determine the flow.
Nets were also ready for participants. While there were some fish around, they were searching for much smaller organisms.
Macroinvertebrates, very small organisms, are what the river monitors are hoping to find and identify.
"They have a tolerance to pollution that varies depending on what species we're talking about," Allison explained of these tiny creatures. "That lets us clue into how good the quality of water is."
When a volunteer finds a macroinvertebrate that can't survive in polluted water, that means the stream is likely very clean.
Some examples of macroinvertebrates include: aquatic worms, aquatic sawbugs and many types of larva.
The water chemistry tests can also help determine things like how much oxygen is in the water for species to breathe.
Today's workshop was just one of many offered this summer.
Workshops are held at many locations throughout the season to bring in more volunteers from across the state.
To date, there have been over 4,000 volunteers trained at a workshop like this one.
WRTV spoke with one of the trainees, Saige Sentell. She works in the Beanblossom Creek Watershed in Bloomington.
"The way I might interpret a landscape is different than how somebody else might interpret our landscape," Sentell described of the different perspectives she was witnessing during the workshop. "These tools and resources that standardize this research allows us all to see it through a similar lens."
This lens is helpful for IDEM to continue monitoring water quality in streams across Indiana. Allison reminded me of the importance of this task.
"Water is such a crucial resource. We need to protect it," Allison urged. "To have people like this kind of backing that mission, it's really a special thing."
If you're interested in attending a training workshop, you can view a calendar of their future dates here.
