WMA 5 Ambassador UpdateBy
Margaret Chabot Your
Ambassador's Adventures in New Jersey With the mild New Jersey weather (well, mild for me anyway) your Watershed Ambassador has been out and about lately. Focusing most of my time on fieldwork, I am doing biological and visual assessments to take advantage of the great weather before things get busy in the spring.
I am assigned to take the majority of my samples from the Pascack Brook sub-watershed (officially known as Hydrologic Unit Code 02030103170010) and so have been visiting the towns of Montvale, Park Ridge, Woodcliff Lake and Hillsdale. If you live or work around those areas you might see my maroon van with Maine plates parked along the road. If you look closer you might even see me in or about the water. Thus far I have talked to a few local residents that have taken the time to stop and ask what I am doing in their river. I am always happy to answer questions about what I am up to while I am in the water.
Part of my assessment involves observation while the other part has me measuring the physical aspects of the stream such as flow rate, temperature, average width, and average depth. The flow rate is by far my favorite test. To do this, we measure out a section of the stream that is 10 feet long. This section should look like an average flowing part of the stream. We mark the start and end of this section with red flags and get out a stopwatch.
For ten feet our scuba ducky races down stream. Some days the water is moving more quickly than others. Some days he encounters small rapids we call riffles in the stream. These oxygenated areas provide the best habitat for the macroinvertebrates I collect and count during each biological assessment. These are all just part of his job and he overcomes obstacles with ease. Each journey's length depends on how fast he is going and how long it takes me to catch him. Retrieving him when his job is done is the tricky part. The moment he passes the second flag, we stop the timer and make a dash to get him out of the water. When I pick him up and shake him off, he's always smiling. It may have been a rough trip, but he can't wait to do it again.
As always, if you have any questions regarding my program or are in need of presentations or trainings, feel free to contact me! -Margaret Chabot Ambassador@HackensackRiverkeeper.org 201-968-0808 |
My hero of this test is a yellow
rubber ducky decked out in scuba diving gear. He knows that he was made for more
than just bath time and holds his head high. Just before the upstream flag, he
is set down in the frigid water to establish buoyancy and we let him go. The
very moment he crosses the path of the first flag, we start the stopwatch. This
way we calculate velocity by dividing the distance of ten feet by the time in
seconds it takes him to travel it.