Blue Thumb Volunteer Trainings

Tahlequah:
March 4 (Stream Ecology Education)
March 5 (Stream Monitoring)*

*Stream Ecology Education Training is a prerequisite to take this training*

Sign up here!

Blue Thumb is celebrating our 30 Year Anniversary in 2023! We have a lot of fun things planned, so stay tuned for news, updates, and information on how to participate!

Join us for our first regional trip as we learn to fly fish in the Illinois River Watershed! Spots are limited, so it's a first come, first serve event!

Call for Volunteers!

30 Year Celebration

We have somehow ended up in January of 2023 (at the time of this writing) and as your Blue Thumb calendar proudly proclaims, Blue Thumb is celebrating 30 years of volunteer stream monitoring! A series of extra fun field trips are being planned (like learning to fly fish on February 11 - you still have time to sign up) and a big "all volunteer" event at the Oklahoma Aquarium on Saturday, May 20.

Considering the May 20 event: you can celebrate your own monitoring efforts by bringing a Blue Thumb exhibit.Then you will have this exhibit to use in your community to help residents understand stream protection.

Do you need ideas for your exhibit? Get in touch with Cheryl Cheadle or talk to the Blue Thumb staff member over your area. It takes us all to protect our precious streams and rivers. Help people in your area by arming them with knowledge.

OCLWA

The Oklahoma Clean Lakes and Watersheds Association (OCLWA) is holding their annual conference again! The conference will be held in Stillwater on April 4 & 5, 2023. This is a great "coming together" of people who care about the waterbodies of Oklahoma, and this is YOUR chance to be part of this.

Blue Thumb is seeking volunteers to provide presentations. Dozens of volunteers have presented information over the years, and you have a chance now to tell about your stream, your data, and your experiences being an advocate to protect our waterbodies.

Blue Thumb staff members will assist you in getting information together. Presentations are typically about 20 minutes long. Not only will you provide information, you will get to be a part of the whole experience that IS an OCLWA annual conference! Contact Cheryl Cheadle for more information.

Cheryl Cheadle
Volunteer Coordinator

From the Director!

One of our New Year’s resolutions at Blue Thumb is to empower volunteers to analyze and interpret their data and to share it with others. One of the ways we hope to do this is by offering a series of data workshops in 2023. These workshops will be one-hour webinars or get-togethers that cover a particular topic related to your data. Please see Kim’s article for more information about our webinar series. Until now we have asked volunteers who receive a data package (chemical, bug, fish and habitat data) to develop a volunteer-written data report about their stream. We make these reports available to the public on our website. We have received many excellent reports over the years. In 2023, we want to encourage you to develop a product that is useful and interesting to you. You could develop a scientific report, but you could also film a video, create a StoryMap, write a children’s book, develop outreach materials, put together an exhibit for your local library, give a presentation to your city council, or just about anything else! We want you to think outside the box and share your data with others in creative, new ways. We will make your projects available to the public on our website. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Rebecca Bond
Blue Thumb Director

To our Monthly Monitors:

Howdy Howdy from your QA Officer,

Happy February! I would say "Happy winter!" but January weather was all over the place. It feels like we experienced everything from winter to early summer in the span of one month!

"We Blue Thumb staff had a day-long meeting on December 5th to address what you all had to say. We have, and will continue to, come up with ideas to address a lot of your points of view. I will expand on that in  a future e-news article, perhaps for February's edition. We will hand this out/discuss at your Spring 2023 QA as well, along with our (Blue Thumb staff) action items. Thank you for helping make the program better."

The above paragraph is how I ended my article in last month's newsletter. I am back to follow this up with action items Blue Thumb staff plan to implement this year, based on what volunteer monitors had to say about the program. In no particular order:

Data Webinars

This year, we plan to start some informational webinars about data. Everyone is invited. Our first one will be "Understanding Data" on Thursday, March 9th, at 6:00 pm CST. Check out our Facebook page

for an announcement about this. We will start out with some basics about what data is. Our second of these webinars, "Interpretating Data," will be scheduled for around the middle of the year. We will delve into more specifics about either chemical, bugs, fish, or physical habitat data. the third and final webinar for this year, "Communicating Data," will happen towards the end of the year. This webinar will offer ideas about how to present your data to the public, advocate for your creek, and share the knowledge about your creek with others. We hope that you join us for these webinars and let us know what questions you have.

Practical Learning

You all asked for in-person/further information about the bacteria monitoring. We plan to respond to this request, but we do not have a date or framework for that yet. Stay tuned!

You asked about more hands-on work with bug and fish ID. We plan to have some basics of this on June 24, 2023, at a creek in OKC. We will do some seining for fish and some kick netting, and root and wood scrubbing for bugs. While streamside, we will provide some training about basic ID and some of their cool properties.

Get-togethers

You suggested some social get-togethers. Good news! We are doing four regional trips this year and a Big Celebration as a way to celebrate 30 years of Blue Thumb! All of the dates are in your 2023 Blue Thumb Calendar. Specific info about these events will come via this newsletter, Facebook, and announcements at QA sessions.

Utilizing Volunteers

This might not have made the list, but this is something staff felt strongly we needed to do. Some examples:

• Invite current volunteers to help with new volunteer trainings. Maybe you'd like to come out and help us train new people, have a short time to tell them some of your experiences, perhaps even go to your creek site and share special things about your creek. Or be a second pair of eyes when we are teaching the chemical tests. Maybe you could present the Enviroscape.
• Are you a writer? Perhaps you would like to write an article or two for this newsletter about your creek monitoring experience, environmental education experiences, etc.
• Are you good at investigating/research/googling? We would like to more about equipment and processes other volunteer monitoring programs are using. Perhaps we could find a way to analyze orthophosphate samples that are more user-friendly.

Let us know if you have a skill that you would like to apply within the Blue Thumb program.

I think that wraps it up. If you have any questions or comments about this article (or last month's article), please feel free to contact me or a Blue Thumb staff member. You all are the program, so please let us know how we can help you.

Kim Shaw
Blue Thumb QA Officer

Make the world a better place!

Penelope Michener has agreed to serve as an ex officio youth representative on the Friends of Blue Thumb board. Penelope has been a Blue Thumb volunteer for four years, and she monitors Coal Creek in Grady County. Penelope is a home school student from Mustang. 

Penelope said: “Creeks, rivers, and bodies of water have always fascinated me. If there is water around, I can't stay away from it. My parents have spent a lot of time helping to clean up mud! Blue Thumb gives me a way to learn more about the creeks in our state, and help others learn more too. Monitoring a creek feels like adopting it. Thank you for letting me be a part of your work.”

Cheyanne Olson was elected in January as a new FBT member. Cheyanne said: “I’m Cheyanne Olson, a biology instructor from Rogers State University. I’ve been a member of Blue Thumb for about 5 years, and use it as an educational tool in the classroom to introduce students to the environment. I’ve spent the last few years working with volunteers for my PhD to understand who participates in stream monitoring in Oklahoma. I’m excited to join Friends of Blue Thumb to continue working to support other volunteers, and find exciting new opportunities for everyone.” 

Concerning grants – FBT is currently revising their form so that member conservation districts and Blue Thumb volunteers can apply for funds. If you have an exciting idea, go ahead and email Cheryl Cheadle.

• What record have you broken, lately? This moth has broken the record for the longest tongue of the insect world!
• The power of volunteers is astronomical! These volunteers created a whole woodland, and they aren't even close to being done!
• Speaking of astronomy, do you know your sign? Mangroves do! Check out this cool research about mangroves and the lunar cycle!
• 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!

Oklahoma Conservation Commission

Oklahoma Conservation Districts

Project WET

Friends of Blue Thumb

Soil Health Program

Department of Environmental Quality

EnvironMentor

Macroinvertebrate ID Website