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Blue Thumb Trainings will come to You!
An upcoming Blue Thumb volunteer training will be held at Milo’s in Owasso August 31 and September 1. Did you know that Blue Thumb will hold a training on weekdays if there is 1) a sponsoring entity and 2) a guarantee of at least ten participants? Milo’s, famous for their tea and lemonade that most large grocery stores carry, came to Blue Thumb with a desire to be a good environmental citizen in Owasso, and we are thrilled to help them accomplish this goal!
Do you work for a company or educational institution that wants to add sustainability to their roster? Consider asking your Blue Thumb contact, or email Cheryl, about the possibilities. Speaking of coming to your location, teachers are already aware that once they complete a Blue Thumb training session they can request a “mini-academy” to bring in a Blue Thumb professional to teach students the water quality test procedures. Keep in mind we need some advance notice.
Rising temperatures, Rising Voices
The warmer temperatures being experienced across the globe impact our streams.
Do you pay attention to the temperature of your stream, and if you are one of our long term volunteers, are you seeing trends in stream temperature from one year to the next? Global change (another phrase for climate change) is happening, and the impacts are numerous.
Some of the impacts on streams are obvious, some less so. Temperatures creeping higher obviously means there will be less available oxygen for fish and benthic macroinvertebrates. Warm water can hold less dissolved oxygen than cool water. Chemical reactions tend to be accelerated with heat, and warmer water tends to suffer from the release of MORE nutrients into our streams and rivers. When you see a stream that has no flow and simply warm pools with an abundance of algae, this is likely to be the situation.
As a Blue Thumb volunteer, you are in a unique position to educate those around you who are unlikely to be making regular treks to a stream. You are gathering data and making observations therefore you have something to say. How will you choose to use your voice? What actions will you choose to take for the good of our wild places, our communities, and future generations? Will you shoot me an email and perhaps several of us will want to delve deeper into this and we can plan a get-together…maybe in person, maybe virtual.
Cheryl Cheadle Volunteer Coordinator
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From the Director!
Guess what?! In 2023, the Blue Thumb Program will turn 30 years old! We plan to spend 2023 celebrating our great volunteers and the valuable data you collect. Here are a few plans that are in the works:
- A special t-shirt to commemorate Blue Thumb’s birthday. You are invited to submit design ideas. The best design will be featured on our volunteer t-shirts during 2023.
- Four regional trips to celebrate volunteers and simply enjoy nature and each other’s company. Destinations include a float trip down the Illinois River, digging for selenite crystals in the Great Salt Plains, fly fishing in the southeast and a hike in the Wichita Mountains.
- A spring birthday bash at a fun venue, TBA.
Please reach out to your field person if you have a good idea about how we might honor our volunteers during 2023.
Rebecca Bond Blue Thumb Director
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To our Monthly Monitors:
Howdy Howdy from your QA Officer,
Lets talk oxygen. We all need it to survive, even the aquatic fish and bugs. Many things affect the amount of oxygen present in the creek: flow, temperature, time of day, algae, and whether or not the creek has moving water. Which leads me to testing oxygen during the summer. I want to remind all you creek monitoring volunteers that there is a High Range Oxygen Test and also a Low Range Oxygen Test. The ‘usual’ test is the High Range Oxygen Test. But when the water temperature is higher in the summer and flow is lower or slower, oxygen concentrations could be lower. So when should you use the Low Range Oxygen Test? If you perform the high range and your solution changes to colorless on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd drop, we want you to perform the Low Range Oxygen Test. Oxygen at 3 mg/L or less is extremely stressful on fish, so performing the low range test will better tell us is it 2.4 mg/L rather than 3 mg/L. The Low Range Oxygen Test is spelled out for you in your written instructions (which can also be found on our website) and we also have a YouTube video for the low range test as well (also on our website). If you have questions, please contact a Blue Thumb staff member and we’d be happy to help you out. When it comes time for you to enter your results within the Data Entry App, please be mindful of what test range you select (this ties in to what I wrote about in last month’s article). If you performed the Low Range Oxygen Test, select that, enter your drop numbers for each sample, the App will automatically calculate the final answer (# drops X 0.2 = _ mg/L). Please double check the final calculated answer each time for each test before you move on to enter more data. This way you are helping with the QA process.
If your creek is dry or not flowing, walk to where you can find water. In actuality your site is about ½ mile in distance (1/4 mile upstream and also 1/4 mile downstream from your ‘usual’ monitoring site). So if your ‘usual’ site is dry, do some walking to find some water. If it is a pool that is deep enough to fill your oxygen bottles without touching/disturbing the bottom and you can get some water in your sample water bottle, then go ahead and monitor, but IMPORTANT to note in the comments that you monitored from a pool. If you find no water, then fill out the first page of the datasheet and say site was dry, enter this info into the App and that is all viable data.
Stay hydrated, stay cool, stay safe, pray for rain (or snow).
Kim Shaw Blue Thumb QA Officer
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 Blue Thumb Volunteer Trainings
Tulsa: September 10 (Stream Ecology Education) September 11 (Stream Monitoring)*
Weatherford: October 15 (Stream Ecology Education) October 16 (Stream Monitoring)*
Sign up here!
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 Volunteer Monitoring Webinar
Come join us on September 13 at 3:00 pm EST (2:00 pm CT for us Oklahomans) and listen to Blue Thumb Volunteer Coordinator Cheryl Cheadle and Director of Harbor Watch Nikki Spiller talk about local uses of volunteer-collected data! The description of the webinar states:
"Across the country there are hundreds of water quality programs that involve members of the public in collecting data, but how are these data used? This webinar will explore data use on the local level by watershed programs and volunteers. Case studies will look at the use of baseline, stormwater, and bacteria data for education and pollution hot spotting."
Register for this webinar before September 13! The title of the talk is "Local Use of Volunteer-collected data: Spotlight on Long Island Sound and Oklahoma." Hope to see you there!
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 Fish collections are still happening!
It looks like, weather pending, August will be the last month for our fish collections this year! Below is a list of creeks in the Arkansas Valley and Ozark Highland Ecoregions that we still have left to fish this summer:
- Spring Creek: Three Spring Farm (August 3)
- Baron Fork (August 4)
- Fourche Maline Creek (August 25)
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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Exciting news! Sharks and seahorses have been found in the previously declared "biologically dead" River Thames!
- On a happy note, an Australian zoo is milking its Giant Funnel Web Spider to make lifesaving antivenom! You can read all about it from the Smithsonian!
- 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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