Watershed Education with YERC

SGMS students test water quality samples they collected from Fleshman Creek

This year, we have been working alongside Park County Community Foundation and Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation to implement watershed education for students in Park County as part of our RiverNET program. At YERC, we feel that education and community involvement are crucial components of any conservation effort. We believe that by including students in our RiverNET program through educational events, we can help provide the community with a greater knowledge of the watersheds they rely on and empower them with the information needed to protect the most valuable resource in the west: water. 

To kick off this effort, YERC staff taught in-class lessons for students from Sleeping Giant Middle School in Livingston, Montana early this spring. Our staff presented about key aspects of water quality and conservation to 7th grade students with a focus on information specific to watersheds in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. 

As a follow-up to the in-class lessons, YERC hosted an educational field-day for the same group of students this June. At this event, YERC Staff, volunteers, and teachers from SGMS took students to a local park to teach them about water quality and watershed conservation. Students had the opportunity to act as “citizen scientists” and collect data on Fleshman Creek, a small creek that runs right by their school. To do this, students rotated through five different stations, each allowing them to gain hands-on experience with a different aspect of water quality. These stations included water chemistry, macroinvertebrate collection, turbidity measurement, riparian songbird observation, and pH measurement. YERC staff and volunteers helped the students interpret the data they collected and gain a greater insight into the quality of the water that flows right by their school. 

To help connect education to our RiverNET program, our field techs installed a stream gauge on Fleshman Creek late this summer. This gauge is set to record the water level and temperature of the creek every hour. We plan to share the data collected by the gauge with the teachers at SGMS so it can be used to supplement in-class instruction and help the students learn more about their local watershed.

Many thanks to PCCF and Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation for helping to fund and support this education initiative.