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Bacteria – Friend or Foe? Bacteria are found everywhere. Bacteria live on your skin, under your fingernails, and in your gut. Most bacteria fall into the category of harmless or even helpful, and without bacteria we could not digest our food. With Blue Thumb bacteria testing kicking off this month, “From the Water’s Edge” offers this article to get you in the spirit of bacterial monitoring.
When we think about bacteria as a water pollutant, we are likely to be thinking about the fecal coliform group of bacteria. These bacteria originate in the intestines of warm blooded animals, like people, cattle, dogs, raccoons, and crows. If you test and find fecal coliform bacteria present, this is not alarming. There are many species that fit into this group, and in bacterial testing Blue Thumb is looking for a type of fecal coliform bacteria called Escherichia coli (E.coli). Even of the E. coli bacteria, not all strains are harmful, but if E. coli is found, this indicates fecal bacteria are present and harmful bacteria strains might be present.
The Coliscan Easygel system of bacterial testing used by Blue Thumb is provided to volunteers with the necessary instructions for use. The primary trick is counting the colonies once incubation has taken place. Volunteers who would like help identifying E. coli colonies and counting them should contact a Blue Thumb staff member before collecting water and offering the bacteria the chance to grow. That way a Blue Thumb person can meet up with you when the timing is right to evaluate your tiny bacterial community.
While not a mandatory part of Blue Thumb, screening for bacteria is not difficult, and once you learn how to count the colonies, it is an additional dataset that can come in handy. You can even request extra media and petri dishes for some experimentation, such as monitoring after a rain, when the water is especially low, or sampling an extra stream or two in your vicinity. You might take your “citizen scientist” activities to a whole new level with bacterial monitoring.
Cheryl Cheadle
Volunteer Coordinator
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Happy June, Blue Thumb volunteers!
During this strange interlude of COVID-19 I have had a little time to complete tasks that have been on the backburner for a while. One such task was a major overhaul of our Blue Thumb Quality Assurance Project Plan, or QAPP. What is a QAPP, you might ask? A QAPP is a quality assurance (QA) document that is required for any program that uses EPA funds to collect environmental data. The QAPP outlines all of the steps we take to ensure that our data are reliable and appropriate for their intended uses. The QAPP covers such items as staff and volunteer training requirements; measurement ranges for the kits we use to analyze chemical samples; when, where and how often we collect data; how we manage the data after collections; how we assess whether data meet our QA requirements; and what we do when data do not meet our QA requirements. The QAPP also dictates how many QA sessions we have with volunteers, how many times we repeat an analysis, and how many replicates we do for fish, bug and habitat collections. In short, the QAPP provides a structure for our program that ensures we generate solid, reliable data. The QAPP does not necessarily make for captivating reading, but it does spell out a lot of the “why” and “how” of Blue Thumb. Let me know if you would like a copy; I would be happy to email one to you.
Rebecca Bond
Blue Thumb Director
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To our Monthly Monitors:
Howdy Howdy from your QA Officer,
As it is late Spring nearing the start of Summer, Oklahoma tends to get stormy, as it already has (more so in some areas than in others). I wanted to bring to your attention, monitoring volunteers, that we'd really like you to go out and monitor during your normal day and time even if it is raining or just has, as long as your safety is not in jeopardy. Monitoring during a rain event or shortly after may capture some of the non-point source pollutants that are washing off the land and finding their way to your creek. Rain events can increase the concentrations of your tests, but can also decrease your results due to dilution. So monitoring a rain event will give us some good data about what happens to your creek site when the land area is washed with rain. But we want you to be safe while doing this. If there is thunder and/or lightning we want you to wait that out; a few minutes or hour, go the following day, go the next week on the same day - whatever fits in your schedule. Also, get to know your watershed, both the size and landuse. Perhaps your watershed is pretty small, but if it is mostly hard surfaces (streets, buildings, parking lots, pristine short lawns, etc) there might be a very fast flush during/right after a rain and your creek site might rise very quickly. Or maybe you are working in a large watershed that will also quickly increase creek flow, it might not even have rained where you monitor but the rain was many miles upstream. In a more natural area watershed, the creek site might stay high for a while as the land is slow to release the added rain water. So get out there and learn more about your creek site and watershed, even during rain, but stay safe while doing it.
Kim Shaw
Blue Thumb QA Officer
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 Make the world a better place!
Friends of Blue Thumb met in May and voted to support volunteers who will attend “Changes~Challenges~Choices” this fall (October 23 – 25) at Grand Lake. Yes, this is our Blue Thumb conference, and also it is a chance to invite facilitators from Project WET, WILD, and Learning Tree to join us. There will be a wonderful focus on environmental education – just what we need to shine the light on doing a better job of caring for our one and only earth. Friends of Blue Thumb will offer mileage stipends based on how far volunteers travel to participate. The offer is good for currently active volunteers. For more information, contact Cheryl Cheadle. Don’t wait until the last minute to plan the best field trip of the year!
 
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 Blue Thumb Volunteer Trainings
Claremore:
September 19 (Stream Ecology Education)
September 20 (Stream Monitoring)*
McAlester:
November 7 (Stream Ecology Education)
November 8 (Stream Monitoring)*
*Stream Ecology Education Training is a prerequisite to take this training*
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 Save the date for the 2020 outdoor education workshop! This workshop is a new spin on our Blue Thumb volunteer conference, bringing together Project WET, Project WILD and Project Learning Tree from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas. Enjoy fellowship with citizen scientists and outdoor educators, fun activities, and informative presentations from experts all on the beautiful shores of Grand Lake. More information and registration coming soon!
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 With June comes the first of the fish collections! This year, we are going to be focusing on fishing the Cross Timber's Ecoregion. If your stream is not on the list, and you would still like to help us fish, please get in touch with Kim Shaw.
These are the streams that we have scheduled for this year, and some dates that we already have scheduled:
- Clear Boggy Creek: Hwy 377
- Coal Creek: Morris Park
- Coffee Creek: Hwy 66
- Elm Creek: Indian Hills Road (June 17)
- Feather Creek (August 3)
- Guy Sandy Creek (June 9)
- Lake Creek: Wintersmith Park
- Little Sandy: Hwy 99 (June 11)
- Mooser Creek: Pepsi
- Okmulgee Creek: 13th
- Okmulgee Creek: Muskogee Ave
- Rock Creek: Oklahoma Street
- Sanborn-Hazen Creek: Strickland
- Sand Creek: Osage Hills State Park
- Sharps Creek: Grove
- Sharps Creek: Silo
- Soldier Creek: Hwy 66
- Soldier Creek: Reno Ave
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- Ever heard of a Howrey's Clubtail Dragonfly before? Probably not, as it's a new species that was recently discovered right here in Oklahoma! Check out the biologists that did the research here!
- Want to help update the Encyclopedia of Life Images database? Then join in to sort through wildlife images!
- With summer approaching, the increase in harmful algal blooms also approaches. You can help track this phenomenon with CyanoTRACKER.
- Don't forget about the "Stream Selfie" project from the Izaak Walton League, the #trashtag movement, and tick testing!
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