RiverNET Community Science Co-Op - 2019 Year End Summary

YERC field biologists, Mikaela Howie, Kyle Roberts, Spencer Link and Morgan Squires collecting water discharge data and installing a HOBO sensors in order to dewtermine rating curves over the spring run-ff period of late winter i

Winter 2018-19: Through the long Montana winter we were busy analyzing our 2018 RiverNET data, and received the official stamp of approval from the Montana Department of Environmental Quality for our RiverNET Sampling & Analysis Plan, paving the way for lab support from DEQ’s Volunteer Monitoring Program.    

Spring 2019: With support from Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, the Sweet Grass Conservation District, and the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, our field crew established 17 new stream gauge sites between Gardiner and Big Timber, installed Bluetooth-enabled depth sensors at 9 of these sites, and developed stream profiles at each site while collecting a series of depth and flow measurements across all stream stages (between ice-off and spring run-off) to perform the calculations needed to convert the sensors’ depth measurements to the stream’s discharge in Cubic Feet/Second.

Anyone with a smartphone can download the stream gauge sensor data and view a plot showing depth and temperature over time, like the plot below from Lower Big Creek. At the same time, the data will be automatically uploaded to YERC’s cloud database, converted to discharge using the formulas we calculated in the spring, and displayed on our online visualization platform at www.yellowstoneresearch.org/rivernet

YERC, research director, demonstrating how to download RiverNET data from HOBO sensors. The graph depicted here shows the water depth and temperature data produced by the HOBO steam sensors installed on the Upper Yellowstone. This data is correlated with rating curve data collected by the spring field crew to calculate stream discharge.

Summer 2019: Our field crew resumed routine water quality monitoring in the Upper Yellowstone, new and improved for 2019 by adding duplicate sampling analyzed at an external lab to ensure data QA/QC, thanks to support from DEQ.

We collected samples at 26 sites on the Upper Yellowstone River and its tributaries; analyzed them for important nutrients within 48 hours of collection; and posted the results online as soon as they passed quality control, alongside blog posts interpreting these results.

Spencer Link and the summer 2019 RiverNET fileld crew analyzing water quality samples (depicted photo right) at the YERC Bozeman lab. Each water sample gets analyzed for temperature, pH, orthophosphate, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, nitrate, and nitrite. An external analyses of duplicate samples is also conducted for quality control.

Fall 2019: October was a big month as RiverNET was featured in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle with an article headlined            “Good Science”!  Reporters visited one of our sensor sites in Paradise Valley, met some of our volunteers and supporters, and witnessed the analysis of water quality samples by YERC scientists in the Bozeman lab. 

The Bozeman Chronicle newspaper article featuring YERC and RiverNET!

Also in October, YERC got news that we were successful in our bid for the Patagonia Environmental Grant and will receive $25,000 to pursue work on Mill Creek in Paradise Valley.  The goal of this project is to provide data to the local community and experts so a collaborative solution can be found to address the chronic dewatering of Mill Creek - a prime native Yellowstone cutthroat trout spawning tributary.

And as our water quality monitoring concluded for the season, we also tested protocols to sample for Mercury and Arsenic in the water while collecting baseline data around Gardiner. Plans for future heavy metals testing like this, as well as algae monitoring and beaver sign observations, may be included in future RiverNET protocols.

Rick Wollum, of Angler’s West in Paradise Valley, demonstrates how to use a kicknet to collect aquatic invertebrates.

Ongoing work: YERC is continuing to work with the local community and school groups to develop lesson plans that engage local students in using RiverNET data, tools, and ideas. YERC’s Patrick Cross, along with RiverNET partners at the Park County Environmental Council and Upper Yellowstone Watershed Group, will be meeting with Livingston-area science teachers to train them how to use RiverNET tools and protocols in their own classrooms and student-led monitoring efforts. We also helped Gardiner Public School’s Shelby Jones with her grant proposal to NOAA, incorporating RiverNET into a water monitoring curriculum featuring a collaboration between her students and students on the Crow Indian Reservation in the Little Bighorn Watershed (fingers crossed for Shelby as this project would not only help expand RiverNET to another watershed, but also be an awesome application of how it can help communities that need it most.) In the meantime, we are also finalizing all RiverNET science protocols so that they are user-friendly and transferable to other watersheds and programs, part of RiverNET’s long term goal of helping communities beyond the Upper Yellowstone.

But perhaps our most important work right now is finalizing the Community Science Co-Op plans with the proposed Upper Yellowstone RiverNET founding partners, including PCEC, UYWG, Montana Trout Unlimited, and others in the Upper Yellowstone Watershed community. 

It’s been a busy year of successful accomplishments, and we look forward to more to come in 2020. 

We thank all of our supporters near and far!!!  Happy Holidays from the YERC family!