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From the Volunteer Coordinator
Welcome to the month of July! If you are a monitoring volunteer you will be asked some questions this summer during the bug collection/QA at your stream. If you are NOT a monitoring volunteer, you are being asked these questions right here in this article of “From the Water’s Edge.” We value your answers. Please click on my name below to email me your thoughts.
Here are the questions for your consideration:
- Why are you a Blue Thumb volunteer/what do you want to accomplish?
- How can the Blue Thumb staff help you accomplish this?
We are in the business of protecting our streams, rivers, lakes, and wetlands. We have volunteers to help us spread the message. If stream and river protection is up to the Blue Thumb staff, we can only accomplish so much. If hundreds of volunteers are in our network (and of course you are) we can spread great information and motivation all over Oklahoma. Let us help you to be an effective educator! I look forward to hearing from you! Thank you!
Cheryl Cheadle
Volunteer Coordinator
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From the Director
Each year, Blue Thumb staff go through extensive quality assurance procedures to ensure we collect robust data. Among these QA checks are the fish identification test and the habitat assessment test which take place during our annual “Fish School.” In 2020 and 2021, we had virtual trainings and tests due to COVID. This year, we were happy to be back in the field. Fish School took place in the extreme southeastern corner of Oklahoma, May 16-19. We fished Push Creek, Rock Creek and Luksuklo Creek. The tests lead collectors must pass are challenging. A “pass” on the fish test is 98% or higher (identifying 50 fish and specifying how each individual should be processed). Each lead collector’s habitat score must be within 15% of the averaged scores of seasoned field staff.
Fish School 2022 started at the Red Slough Wildlife Management Area, home to a healthy population of alligators, where we fished Push Creek. In Push Creek, we caught a bowfin, a pygmy sunfish and a redspotted sunfish, among other species we see more commonly. We also caught several golden silversides. This was the first time golden silversides had been recorded in Oklahoma! They were beautiful: their bodies were bright yellow-green and the males had light red snouts. At Luksuklo Creek, we caught a dollar sunfish, a redfin pickerel and a beautiful logperch. Candice, Kim and Becky took the habitat test at Rock Creek, where we caught a lamprey and perhaps the most exciting find of the week, a western lesser siren. A western lesser siren is a fully aquatic salamander with front legs, but no back legs. Because the western lesser siren is a species of greatest conservation need, we gently admired it for a few minutes and returned it to its habitat to grow and reproduce.
Fish School marks the beginning of our 2022 fishing adventures. We look forward to fishing Blue Thumb creeks this summer. We can’t wait to see you in the creek!
Rebecca Bond
Blue Thumb Director
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To our Monthly Monitors:
Howdy Howdy from your QA Officer,
Please please double check your data entry. I know we have it a lot easier now with the online data entry App, but please double check your work before you hit the ‘submit’ button. Yes, it is very easy to miss-type numbers in, whether on phone or keyboard, or ‘fat finger’ them when using a phone. A good rule of thumb (pun intended) for you all would be to look at the calculated/final answer that is generated by the App after you enter both of your creek water readings for each test. I am finding several troubles with this especially on the oxygen test.
- Some of you have mistakenly hit the ‘Low Range’ button instead of the ‘High Range’ button, thus calculating the final answer to be multiplied by 0.2. This is particularly troublesome for me in the summer months when oxygen is generally lower due to warmer water temperatures. So I am having to email several of you to clarify if you did the usual High Range test or did you really truly do the Low Range test. So in this case, after you have entered your readings of lets say 6 drops and 7 drops, look to see that the App calculation of “6 mg/L DO High #1” and “7 mg/L DO High #2” show up – as long as did the High Range test. If you mistakenly hit the ‘Low Range’ button, the App will show “1.2 mg/L DO Low #1” and “1.4 mg/L DO Low #2” respectively, and this is VERY bad when you meant that the creek really had 6mg/L and 7mg/L DO. VERY big difference here!!!! So please double check the App calculated answers and make sure they reflect what you actually tested.
- Please strive towards ‘Good Repeatability’. Meaning both creek water tests should be very comparable to each other.
- Oxygen and Chloride – no more than 2 drops difference
- Phosphate – no more than 3 marks on the wheel difference
- pH – within 0.2 of each other
- Nitrate/Nitrite – within 2.0 of each other
- Ammonia – no more than 0.1 of each other
If the difference between your creek tests are more than above, do a 3rd or even 4th test and take the closest two that hopefully will be ‘good repeatability’. And the problem could also be mistakenly entered data as well. Hence, double check your data entry before you hit the submit button.
For those volunteers that I have emailed this year so far to clarify data with, I thank you for working with me on this to make sure your data reflects what you did and the results you got. I don’t know all your monitoring sites and have perhaps only met you once or maybe even not at all. So thank you for working with me via email.
Another way you can check your data values and monitoring dates is to look at your data on the ‘Map App’. All Blue Thumb chemical data since November/December 2020 is viewable at this link. The link is posted on our website as well. So go here every so often to check your own data, look at ALL the sites we have data on since end of 2020, look at a creek site’s data near you, some volunteers have attached pictures, etc. If you see any missing data or wrong numbers/data please let me know. There are nearly 1,000 data sets that have been entered since end of 2020! WOW! THANK YOU for all your hard work of monitoring and sending in your data. Your data really fills in water quality gaps. I don’t think many state agencies monitor creeks within cities in Oklahoma, and it is hard for other entities to monitor on private land. So your hard work and data are truly meaningful. Thank you for monitoring.
This leads me directly into another avenue. For this Summer QA (in accordance with your onsite bug collection for this summer) it is all about talking with you creek monitors to see:
- Why you monitor for Blue Thumb/what do you personally want to get out of it?
- How can we better help you achieve your goals?
Blue Thumb has a long history and it has been a long time since we have had little focus groups with our volunteers. After long periods we all get into routines/grooves and just keep doing. Sometimes it is good to take a stop/breather/slow up and do some evaluating. That is our intention here, to see what you volunteers have to say and perhaps we need to take a different approach/direction to help you within the program. If you have further comments/words to say after you meet up with a Blue Thumb staff member for your QA, please email any one of us these further comments/words. Later this year, Blue Thumb staff will have a meeting to discuss the outcome of this QA (your words). We will write up general results (volunteers who submitted comments will not be identified) of your answers/comments and present it back to you for you to read over and give us any further comments. We will concentrate our efforts on how we can better help you gain what it is that you want to get out of the Blue Thumb program. This will be a long process but we will keep it transparent to you. Anytime you have questions/comments/concerns please don’t hesitate to contact any one of us. Thank you again for monitoring.
Kim Shaw
Blue Thumb QA Officer
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 Blue Thumb Volunteer Trainings
Tulsa:
September 10 (Stream Ecology Education)
September 11 (Stream Monitoring)*
Sign up here!
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 It's time for fish season!
Every summer, Blue Thumb performs fish collections in a certain area of the state according to a rotating Ecoregion pattern. This year (2022), we will be in the eastern part of the state, in the Arkansas Valley and Ozark Highlands Ecoregions. Below is a list of creeks in these regions that we will be fishing:
- Morris Creek (July 27)
- Town Creek (July 26)
- Fourche Maline Creek (August 25)
- Beaty Creek (June 29-30)
- Brush Creek (June 29-30)
- Shell Branch Creek (July 22)
- Spring Creek: Evan’s (July 15)
- Spring Creek: Three Spring Farm
- Spring Creek: Rocky Ford (July 14)
- Baron Fork
If you would like to attend a fish collection, even if it's not on your creek, please contact Kim Shaw, Blue Thumb QA Officer. She will give you all the information and details about the collection, where and what time we will meet that day, and further instructions.
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  Among all the things connected with Covid, one good thing that has happened as a result of the pandemic is that MORE Americans are gardening! Not just Americans, but people worldwide are spending more time with their hands in the soil and with fresh, home-grown vegetables on the table. Some benefits of this exciting trend:
- 55% of American households engage in some kind of gardening – from pollinator plots to containers of tomatoes.
- 35% of US households produced a portion of their own vegetables.
- Contrary to many businesses hurt by the pandemic, the sale of gardening tools, especially online orders, increased.
- Up until 2020, the greatest demographic involved in gardening was the baby boomers. Since Covid the Millenials have taken over!
- Most people who already gardened did not increase their gardening time for more flowers or food, but for the mental health benefits of being outdoors
- New people who started gardening did not do so nearly as much for the food, but for the mental health benefits of being outdoors
- Vegetable garden yields tend to be about $1 per square foot, so a 20 square foot garden is likely to produce $20 worth of vegetables, on average.
- Children involved in gardening tend to be cooperative about eating their veggies!
This information is from the website.
 
- Using Night Vision and A.I., Scientists Recorded Spiders’ Entire Choreography for Web Building! Read all about how!
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This New Installation Pulled 20,000 Pounds of Plastic From the Great Pacific Garbage Patch!
- 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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