My first week
May 2nd through May 5th,
So my first week was exciting and nerve wracking. I suffer from Social Anxiety, which I thought it would affect me negatively this summer. well, so far I was wrong. I do not know if it's because I feel more at ease around people who have the same interest in the environment as I do or what not, or if I am starting to overcome my anxiety issue.
May 2nd:
My first day was not too exciting since it was raining. But, I did learn how to put Adopt a Stream kits together. Adopt a Stream is a program that involves CRWC employees and the public in monitoring several different sites throughout the Clinton River Watershed. This event happens twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. What we are trying to find out is what kinds of water bugs are living in the water, depending on which group they fall in (Group 1, 2, and 3) tells us how healthy the water is. Group 1 bugs are pollution sensitive, Group 2 bugs are still sensitive but can tolerate a low amount of pollution, and Group 3 bugs are very tolerant of pollution. When we do a site we have a packet to fill out that explains to the reader the conditions we experience (weather, water temp, water depth, etc.) a rough sketch of the 300 ft of river, creek, or stream we observed, tally of how many bugs in each group we observed, if any invasive plant species were found, and a stream score. When collecting a group of people would be in the water for a total of 30 minutes with d nets, after collecting for 30 minutes we will take the bucket that is filled with all the bugs we collected and dump it into three individual buckets. Then we sift through all of the buckets picking out all the bugs we find and marking down which ones we found.
Like I said bugs are split into 3 groups when we mark which bugs we find we total the amount of each bug. if the total amount of bugs for one type of bug is 1-10 we consider it RARE, and if it's 11+ then we consider it COMMON. After all the totaling is done we count up how many rare and common there are in each group and they are put into a special count for each group (I'll explain this later) and after adding each group we find out what state the river, stream or creek is in.
So my first week was exciting and nerve wracking. I suffer from Social Anxiety, which I thought it would affect me negatively this summer. well, so far I was wrong. I do not know if it's because I feel more at ease around people who have the same interest in the environment as I do or what not, or if I am starting to overcome my anxiety issue.
May 2nd:
My first day was not too exciting since it was raining. But, I did learn how to put Adopt a Stream kits together. Adopt a Stream is a program that involves CRWC employees and the public in monitoring several different sites throughout the Clinton River Watershed. This event happens twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. What we are trying to find out is what kinds of water bugs are living in the water, depending on which group they fall in (Group 1, 2, and 3) tells us how healthy the water is. Group 1 bugs are pollution sensitive, Group 2 bugs are still sensitive but can tolerate a low amount of pollution, and Group 3 bugs are very tolerant of pollution. When we do a site we have a packet to fill out that explains to the reader the conditions we experience (weather, water temp, water depth, etc.) a rough sketch of the 300 ft of river, creek, or stream we observed, tally of how many bugs in each group we observed, if any invasive plant species were found, and a stream score. When collecting a group of people would be in the water for a total of 30 minutes with d nets, after collecting for 30 minutes we will take the bucket that is filled with all the bugs we collected and dump it into three individual buckets. Then we sift through all of the buckets picking out all the bugs we find and marking down which ones we found.
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| D-net *picture from google* |
May 3rd:
My second day was pretty easy, I got to go to Yate's park and work with kids for about 3-4 hours guiding them through their special program called Stream Leaders. This program is just like Adopt a Stream but teaching and guiding students through three different stations, Biological, Physical, and Chemical. Biological is bugs, Physical is talking and discovering about the flow of the site (how fast the water is moving), Chemical is testing out the chemistry of the body of water. But today (May 3rd) I was only in the Biological part for the day. Becuase the Clinton River was flowing pretty fast and the water was pretty high I had to make sure that students were not passing me (I stood right by the drop off) and I also helped students find the bugs.
After Stream Leaders, we broke for lunch and we went to an Adopt a Stream site since there is not team leader that was able to reach the site for the event. So my supervisor and I went to the site and I was in the water for a good 30-35 minutes collecting bugs and water temperature.
May 5th:
Today was another easy day, my co-worker and I, went up to home depot to buy a door pull for the office door, and then we went to Krogers to buy snacks and pop for the luncheon for the day. We got back to the office and had lunch and sat through a presentation about upcoming projects on the Clinton River. I thought it was very interesting to learn about the new universal access for kayaks and canoes for people who have a hard time getting into and out of the water.
For the rest of the day I helped fold pamphlets for the upcoming River Day, over 150 pamphlets I folded and I was told to pick 10 places and try to hit all of them. I did not get to all of the places since most were closed for the day.
Overall:
I enjoyed my first week at my internship and I am looking forward to the rest of my internship.
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