WMA 5 Ambassador Update

By Michael Guerriero

 

Adapting to Winter’s Chill

 

The cold weather has arrived: from the northern reaches of the Pascack Brook down through the frigid phragmites surrounding the Sawmill Creek, winter is upon our watersheds.  And just as nature prepares and settles in for the season’s chill, so too has your intrepid Watershed Ambassador readied himself and adapted.

One important adaptation has been the suspension of outdoor educational presentations in favor of the more comfortable indoor curricula.  With Riverkeeper’s boats out of the water, and students’ attention spans significantly attenuated by the brisk winter wind, classroom learning has necessarily replaced in situ environmental education.  The visual assistance provided by the enviroscape watershed model, however, has allowed students to grasp both the watershed concept and the correlated ideas of point source and non-point source pollution, from the warmth of the classroom.

The cold has also forced adjustments to your ambassador’s stream sampling strategy.  The increased difficulty in locating those streambed critters necessary to carry out a biological assessment of a waterway, in concert with the ease with which a stream can be visually assessed in the absence of foliage, has produced a seasonal modification in sampling priority.  While still conducting a baseline number of biological assessments, I have temporarily shifted my focus to the visual characterization of streams in the watershed.

Particular importance has been placed on visual assessment of the Musquapsink Brook, which has been classified as a WMA5 priority stream segment.  After having immersed myself in the Musquapsink (both figuratively and, unfortunately, literally) I have been able to characterize a significant section of the stream, with a complete assessment planned by the end of the year.  If you would like to train a group to monitor one of your own local waterways, or if you’d like to schedule an educational presentation, please contact me at ambassador@hackensackriverkeeper.org.  Until Hackensack Tidelines brings us together again…please enjoy, and take care of, your watershed.