WEN's Stream Team

Citizen Science Stream Team

Protecting and ensuring the health of our streams and watersheds is everyone’s responsibility. It takes a collaborative network of dedicated and educated citizens all working together to understand and raise awareness about water issues, prevent water pollution, and improve water quality.

Our Citizen Science Stream Team is a group of folks from all walks of life, including retired scientists, college professors,  AmeriCorps members, students from the University of Montana, and even high school students wanting to learn more about water monitoring. 

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After attending a training, you can join our team of dedicated volunteers that go each Sunday afternoon during the spring, summer and fall, given safe stream conditions. As a volunteer you can gain experience and help the team collect important data on the physical properties of water, water quality (chemistry), and biological assessments (aquatic bugs!).  All volunteer data is used to establish baseline data on streams throughout the Missoula area and establish long-term trends. Higher level data (i.e., Level 2) is used to supplement agency-collected data for certain projects.  

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This year (and the following years) WEN’s Stream Team will be focusing their monitoring efforts on Rattlesnake Creek, a local creek in Missoula, MT, to provide critical data for our partners Trout Unlimited (TU) & Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (MT FWP). Rattlesnake Creek is scheduled for a dam removal and habitat restoration to restore natural processes. This project creates an ideal opportunity to provide data to our partners while engaging our citizen scientist in a higher level of stream monitoring project (Level 2). WEN will be sending these citizen scientists to collect important stream data to share with our partners. During this project we are proud to also be partnering up with the University of California, Davis, Center for Community and Citizen Science to help guide them as they write a manual on Citizen Science in regards to dam removal. Check out the article written about this collaboration with UC Davis !

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Stream Team is led by the capable Aissa Wise and everyone is welcome to join the team to help collect important stream data and to learn about the importance of a healthy watershed.

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Click here for more information of the Rattlesnake Creek Dam Removal Project scheduled for 2020.

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Data collected by Stream Team:

• Stream flow (velocity) 

• Cross section profiles

• Stream bank conditions (site description)

• Photo points / GPS points

• Substrate composition (pebble counts)

• Sediment

• pH, dissolved oxygen (DO), temperature, & conductivity

• Riparian plant assessments

• Macroinvertebrates (aquatic bugs!)

• Large woody debris survey