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Just for YOU!
So do you enjoy reading your “From the Water’s Edge” eNewsletter? I really hope that you find at least one thing in each issue that makes you glad you spent some time reading it. And if you are looking at your newsletter right now, you can be a winner! Email or text CHERYL CHEADLE, and if you are within the first ten people to do so, I will send you butterfly milkweed seed right from my own garden! WHAT A DEAL! You can plant them in your yard or give them to a friend, encouraging that friend to be little more nature friendly. Be sure that you send to me your name and complete address. Get in touch with me by email or text to 918-398-1804.
Off the Couch and Into the Creek!
The list of streams I am visiting is expanding, thanks to volunteers who want to make their streams known to all of the folks living in the watersheds. I know that the volunteers from at
least three sites are already dreaming about the education events they will do this spring, perhaps with the help of a Friends of Blue Thumb grant! It is easy to invite me to visit with you at your stream.
QA season and bugpicking
Your Blue Thumb contacts will be traveling with brochures this season! Take a look at the offerings and get some to have available as handouts. Think about creating your own Blue
Thumb brochure that summarizes your very own creek experiences. We can help you.
Cheryl Cheadle
Volunteer Coordinator
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Happy fall!
Today I will be presenting about Blue Thumb in the time of COVID at a Prequel Workshop in anticipation of the National Nonpoint Source Management Workshop, a virtual conference that will take place November 16-19. A few interesting things that we have found during COVID:
1. Volunteers have continued to collect and submit data
2. We were well-positioned to weather COVID because:
- Many monitoring teams are small and/or live in the same household
- Volunteer teams do not have to share equipment
- Volunteers do not have to submit samples to labs
- Staff and volunteers know each other and communicate regularly
3. People continue to want training, and we continue to recruit new volunteers
4. Bug pickings are tricky!
5. Staff and volunteers enjoy the interactions at small trainings
Thank you so much for keeping the program going during this difficult time. Your data are valuable, and we appreciate your commitment and hard work. Please let us know if there is something we can do to make your job easier.
Rebecca Bond
Blue Thumb Director
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To our Monthly Monitors:
Howdy Howdy from your QA Officer,
We are finally getting the program more into the modern technology age!! (Yeah!/*sigh*/ugh, I am hearing from you out there). I personally have a like/hate relationship with technology. But this one I am super stoked about and I think you will be too. Hopefully in November we will release our new data entry App!!!! This will be web-based (Survey123) and should work with your cell phone, tablet, ipad, computer, laptop, etc. We will have a new version of the paper copy of the datasheet to go along with this that we will eventually get out to all of our creek monitors. Some of the changes:
- Eliminating the Legal Location in the header
- On the App you will chose your site from a drop down menu, this will automatically fill in your latitude, longitude, WBID#
- Eliminating the wind speed and direction
- Adding in ‘partially cloudy’ to the Weather
- Changing up some of the verbiage in the Stream Stage
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A BIG change is we want you to enter your wheel reading and number of drops, NOT the calculated answer in mg/L. The App will do the final calculations for you. This will be a learning process for us all but I think the App does a good job letting you know this.
- Blanks only perform at the low range test
- Another neat new application is you can add photos of your creek with each of your data entries!
You can fill in your onsite data while you are at your creek site. It will not ‘save’ your data, but as long as you don’t ‘X out’ of the program you can open up the program again when you get home/to the lab/classroom and fill in your indoor testing results as you do them. Then hit the submit button and you are done. You can still use a paper copy datasheet (as I said we will update these to go along with the App) and then enter all your data into the App when you are done testing. You can still mail in your datasheet as well. Eventually we will completely get rid of the pdf forms. We will keep you informed of this when it happens.
In addition to the data entry App/link, there will be another link so you can view data that has been entered into the App and has also been QA’d. Data that has been entered into the App and not QA’d yet will show up as soon as I can QA it. Once we get a good chunk of data entered into the App, we will start working on creating ‘dashboards’ that will be specialized maybe by ecoregions or by watersheds or by county (not sure yet) that will graph data and I am not sure what all else at this point. But as soon as we release the App, you will be able to see the data entered by all Blue Thumb volunteers!! This is something we’ve wanted for a long time. There is also talk that in the far future we might even work on adding past data into this App.
So please don’t be afraid. We are here to help you with this transition if you need help. We are not just throwing this at you and see if you sink or swim; that is not how we do things. It will be a learning process for us all, me included. If you have any suggestions for edits or have any comments or concerns, please let me know and I’ll be happy to work with you. Your Blue Thumb staff member will be informing you once we go live with this App and some tips on how to use it and will also give you the updated datasheet.
Kim Shaw
Blue Thumb QA Officer
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 Make the world a better place!
Friends of Blue Thumb is in the middle of their fundraising season! Like NPR, The Nature Conservancy, and the political campaigns, we are looking to snag contributions! BUT – never mind that. Click on the 2020 Fundraising letter and see the various projects that have been funded by FBT. Our final board meeting of the year is November 17. We will be talking about the best use of grants to the Blue Thumb volunteers.
So there are two take-aways here. 1) you can easily find the FBT address so sending a check will be easy and 2) you can take a look at what has been funded in the past and can start planning now to submit a proposal. FBT will send out a call for proposals in the near future. Be watching the eNewsletter!
 
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- Check out this article about soil health and soil water infiltration in the recent copy of Oklahoma Farm and Ranch!
- Did you know that there is a whole association for Citizen Scientists? You can become a member and learn more about it here!
- Don't forget about the "Stream Selfie" project from the Izaak Walton League, the #trashtag movement, and tick testing!
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