From the Volunteer Coordinator
Look Closely at your 2023 Blue Thumb Calendar
Blue Thumb calendars have gone to press and will become available in November. So when you meet for your quality assurance session/bug picking/winter bug collection that is when you can get your calendar! Don’t forget to take a couple of extras for friends and family.
As you are looking at the calendar, spend a little extra time noticing that there are notes on some of the dates. 2023 is the 30th year for the collection of stream data by Blue Thumb volunteers. This makes 2023 pretty special.
To help celebrate this anniversary, next year’s calendar holds all of the dates and locations of Blue Thumb training sessions AND some announcements of special events that will take place as volunteer field trips. Not all details are worked out, but the details are being worked out by Blue Thumb staff members as you read this! Please take note of what is happening when so that you can celebrate thirty years of Blue Thumb with staff members and other volunteers.
Inventory Your Community Streams
As a human living in Oklahoma, you either live in a city, town, or rural area. Even if you are in a rural area, you will have a community that you visit for shopping, medical needs, etc. Will you help Blue Thumb gather a little information about how streams in your community are managed?
As you drive, walk, or jog in your community, please pay attention when you see a stream. Is it allowed to flow through its riparian zone? Is the riparian zone mowed to the water’s edge? Do a number of the streams have riprap along the banks? Are the streams in concrete channels? Whether or not you are actively monitoring, please respond.
If you are an active volunteer, consider the stream that you monitor. What do the banks look like at your monitoring site? How does your stream look if you walk ten minutes upstream or ten minutes downstream? Take a few notes and then email Cheryl and share your thoughts on stream management in your community please. Blue Thumb staff members are trying to gain an idea of how well streams are managed in our communities across the state.
Holiday Season
Thanksgiving is coming up, then more holidays, like Christmas, will be celebrated in December. You might be spending more time with family and friends. This can be a great opportunity to talk about your efforts as a Blue Thumb volunteer. As an environmental monitor, you have something to say about caring for the earth. Start a conversation so that others will realize that they, too, can be an important part of caring for our one and only earth.
Cheryl Cheadle
Volunteer Coordinator
To our Monthly Monitors:
Howdy Howdy from your QA Officer,
Climate is changing. The globe is warming. Drought is severe in Oklahoma. Western Oklahoma is more accustomed to creeks drying up. Eastern Oklahoma is not used to this but is currently experiencing dry creeks. Rain is much needed across the state, but hopefully we don’t get the total amount of rain we need all at once.
When it does rain again and water enters dry creek beds and is deep enough for you to monitor again, what will your results be like? I’ve recently been asked this and other similar questions. Unfortunately, my answer is, “I don’t know.” Your results could be higher (more build up of pollution), lower (diluted by rain), or about the same as usual.
Since it hasn’t rained in a while, more pollution is building up on the land. When it rains, washes off the land, and into your creek, there could be higher concentrations of non-point source pollutants with the first flush of rain. Since the ground is so parched, it might take a couple rains to sustain flowing water in your creek. It will take a while to build the water table back up. Oxygen levels might be really good with this freshly fallen and flowing water that is also probably cooler than current surface water temperatures (colder water holds more oxygen, as does faster flowing water).
Your results of your newly restored creek flow could be lower due to the water being rain. The pH of rainwater on average is 6, slightly acidic, just like your DI water. So your creek monitoring might have a slightly lower pH reading than usual. Your nutrient readings could also be lower if there is not much non-point source pollution. If you are monitoring in a more rural area, it might take a while for the rainwater to find its way into the creek, filling up the water table first. In contrast, urban areas have lots more impervious surfaces (hard surfaces of roofs, roads, parking lots, etc), where rainwater hits and rushes very quickly into creeks, potentially causing erosion.
It's also possible that once your creek flows again, you receive the ‘usual’ monitoring results.
There is no way to know until you get out and monitor and see what results you get. All part of the fun mysteries and investigation of science; scientific inquiry often yields more questions than answers. Each creek site is different.
When your creek regains water/flow, please make a note of this in the comments. If you can approximate how long your site has been dry or no flow, please write that in the comments. This will be good information for future use of this data to potentially help explain why results are different than ‘usual’.
Kim Shaw
Blue Thumb QA Officer
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