Water Cooler Talk: Community Science Tool to Track Stream Health

- All right. Well, hello, everyone.

Welcome to the 44th webinar in the Water Cooler Talk series.

My name is Tyler Groh.

I'm the watershed management extension specialist at Penn State University.

Before we begin, I wanna let you know that this presentation is gonna be recorded, and that a link to the recording will be sent out to everyone who is registered.

Thank you so much, again, for attending this webinar.

If it's your first time attending a Water Cooler Talk webinar, we hope that through this series, we'll provide you with current information on water resource-related topics around Pennsylvania and throughout the region.

After today's talk, you'll have, not one, but two surveys for you to fill out.

The first one was created by our presenters and will automatically pop up at the end of the webinar.

Once you close the Zoom box, it'll automatically pop up for you.

And the other one is our standard Water Cooler Talk survey.

I will post the standard Water Cooler Talk survey in the chat box at the very end.

And please feel free to fill it out.

There's a special question in there related to any sort of water topic you'll want to hear about in the future.

We do take that very seriously, and try to line up speakers for that topic in our future webinars in this series.

Also, if you're interested in any sort of professional development certification for attending this webinar, you will need to fill out both your first and last name as well as your email address in that survey in order to get that certificate of attendance for you.

So please do two surveys after today's talk.

We'll greatly appreciate it.

It's not that painful, I promise you.

All right, so today there are a lot of presenters, and I'm so excited for this webinar.

It's a very special group of people.

Today, we are joined by Kathryn Bartling or Katie as she goes by.

She's the watershed project coordinator for the Agriculture and Environment Center at Penn State University.

Jennifer Fetter, who is the director of the Center for Agricultural Conservation Assistance Training, and our fearless Penn State Extension Water Resources team leader.

Kristen Koch, who's the program manager for the Agriculture and Environmental Center at Penn State University.

Natalie Marioni, who is a Penn State Extension Water Resources educator and Master Watershed Steward coordinator for Cumberland, Franklin, and Adams Counties.

And Benjamin Maus, who is the geographic information systems or GIS specialist with the Agriculture and Environment Center, as well as the Center for Agricultural Conservation Assistance Training.

Today, they will unveil the new and improved First Investigation of Stream Health or FISH tool that can be used by anyone to determine the health of a section of stream.

We are very fortunate to welcome Katie, Jen, Kristen, Natalie, and Ben to Water Cooler Talks.

They will now give their presentation titled, Community Science Tool to Track Stream Health.

If you have any questions during or after the presentation, please submit them down below in the Q and A section, and I'll make sure to ask them those questions at the end of their presentation.

For now, please join me in welcoming Katie, Jen, Kristen, Natalie, and Ben.

Take it away.

- Great, thanks so much, Tyler.

As Tyler mentioned, my name is Jen Fetter, and my job right here at this moment is honestly just to kick it over to Kristen Koch in just a second because Tyler did a great job of already saying all the things that we would normally say at the beginning of our presentation as well.

But here, just lining up our names with our faces so that you know who is who throughout the day.

But you should see us on camera too as we're speaking in our specialty areas as well.

So just a quick introduction to who we are.

Our Water Cooler Talks are always Extension talks, but our guest speakers aren't always Extension speakers, so we'll just take the second to let everybody know a little bit more about Penn State Extension.

We believe all people should have access to science-based information through education.

And we are members of your community.

We are Extension educators, specialists, and Extension faculty out in all counties of Pennsylvania.

We're residents here and we are also customers of our own Extension programs.

So we're really proud to deliver great quality information when we can, and we're excited to share with you today the tool and resource that we're gonna be sharing about.

Our program is part of the Agronomy and Natural Resources program, where we cover water resources, forestry, urban forestry, bioenergy, and Master Watershed Stewards program.

But we are part of a larger network, and you may know Extension through a lot of its other offerings across the state.

Food safety and quality, our 4-H youth development program, our horticulture program, which includes the master gardener program, and traditional agricultural systems like field and forage crops, and livestock, and equine systems.

And so today, we're gonna be talking to you about the First Investigation of Stream Health program, our community science tool, and I am gonna officially turn it over to Kristen Koch to take it from here.

- Great, thanks, Jen.

So yeah, my role in this presentation is to give a little bit of the background on what FISH is, hopefully, answer some of your basic questions before all my fellow presenters will dive in a little bit deeper into what the protocol actually is and how to go about filling it out.

So FISH, what does it mean?

Why do we call it that?

FISH, starting out with first, it was the idea of capturing the initial changes that can happen in a stream after restoration is complete.

So a lot of restoration projects, and that might happen in a watershed, and there might be some monitoring that you're more familiar with that takes chemistry, or maybe there's some stream gauges on your particular stream.

The professionals are doing this monitoring, and it can be years and years and years before any sign of improvement is necessarily seen in the stream because you're trying to capture the whole watershed and what's happening both upstream and downstream of us, maybe small restoration project.

But landowners, as they are maybe planting some trees along their stream, they wanna know that they're doing something right.

And so this and what we're gonna be asking you to fill out in the FISH Protocols, looking at those things that can happen pretty quickly maybe within a season or at least more commonly within the first couple of years after restoration project is done right there on the property that you can see that you've had an impact.

So investigation, it is a monitoring protocol.

It is designed for community scientists, really just for the average person to be able to pick up and be able to answer easy questions.

It is designed for smaller streams, wadeable streams.

I'll talk about this a little bit more, but we're not thinking rivers, and Mississippi River, or anything like that.

We're talking our smaller streams, which is mostly here, what we have here in Pennsylvania.

And then health, getting at that how healthy is the stream?

Are you seeing improvement?

Are you seeing maybe some negative results even being captured?

But hopefully, they're positive.

And so getting into what this protocol looks like, it's simple, it's family-friendly.

We ask pretty easy to answer questions.

Hopefully, by the end of today's presentation, you would know how to answer any of these questions when you get out into the field.

But it's really about getting out to a stream, looking around, seeing what you can see, and answering some of these questions and learning a lot more about the health of that stream maybe at that particular moment in time, but ideally changing over time and being able to see that positive change occurring.

So it is based on science.

This protocol was initially developed in 2013 as part of a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant to Penn State.

We were working in the Conewago Creek in sort of Lancaster-Dauphin, South Central Pennsylvania area.

And we were doing a lot of work with landowners.

And so again, wanted to be able to provide them some way to be able to see this positive change happening over time.

And so a committee was pulled together of monitoring experts, and we took what, at the time, was the Instream Comprehensive Evaluation that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection uses to monitor stream health and took that ICE protocol and just translated it into questions that someone who doesn't have a whole lot of training or doesn't have a whole lot of tools would be able to use and still get to a similar result.

So that ICE protocol has been updated in 2018.

It's now the assessment methodology for rivers and streams, but things still line up pretty well in terms of the questions that are being asked and what you're being asked to assess.

And so our goals in this was, again, to connect people to their streams and to their projects.

If you're putting in our restoration project, hopefully, you're getting out there, you're being able to see it, you're able to see the change occurring over time.

Also, maybe if you're getting out and monitoring your project, maybe you're also gonna see signs of maintenance that need to be done sooner, so your projects will be cared for as sort of a side bonus of doing this.

But we also really were hoping to discover some success stories that we can share going forward.

So if you had a project and could get out and monitor it over time, we'd be able to start sharing stories with neighbors and with other landowners to be able to say, the bird population significantly increased after this person planted trees, or they no longer have erosion on their stream bank now that they fenced out their cattle or created a better access, or whatever the project would be.

So hopefully, having some success stories come out.

So again, it's simple little to no equipment needed.

One key thing that we will talk about probably a couple of different times about this presentation is that the results are calibrated to you.

Because there is a little less, maybe vigorous science attributed to it, as well as not having any equipment being used, it is really about you and your observation and how you see the stream changing over time.

It's not something where the same person going out to the same stream is maybe going to get exactly the same results.

That's not the point because the point is seeing that change over time and being able to teach you about your stream and the stream health as opposed to being an expert that we can compare sites to.

But does get provide this guided interaction with a stream.

So a few more sort of basics of sort of who, what, when, and where.

So who?

It really again was developed with everybody in mind, whether you are an individual landowner and your family.

It is family-friendly, a great activity to take your kids out and do, whether you are part of a homeowners association or a volunteer organization like a watershed group, youth clubs like 4-H, and Scout groups, or whether you're maybe managing a park, or conservancy, or some other land manager.

Anyone who has a stream that you're interested in sort of observing the health of that.

And maybe over time is going to be, this will work for.

But also wanted to mention, it wasn't necessarily developed with kids in mind, but "Brooke Meets a Stream Doctor," a new story and activity book that was recently published by Penn State is designed for kids and really took the FISH Protocol and just made it into a story format with easy-to-use activity sheets and guidance for kids to be able to do FISH.

So elementary school was what this was designed for.

So a cool little addition onto the FISH offerings.

Okay, so I've said that it's easy, I've said that you're looking at your stream, but what exactly are you looking at?

The FISH Protocol takes you through investigating the habitat around your stream.

So the riparian area, the land use that is immediately surrounding the stream.

It also looks at the stream bottom, as well as the water clarity itself and looking for wildlife in the stream too.

And then sort of that intersection area, the stream banks and shorelines, where the land is meeting the water.

So again, there's no chemistry involved, no fancy equipment.

There's one optional tool that Natalie will talk about, but that's it.

So when are you doing this?

The FISH Protocol can be used sort of once if you are interested in just learning a little bit more about stream health and maybe getting a better sense of where your stream is at.

But it was really intended to be something that you're tracking that change over time.

So we say at least once a year, but preferably twice a year.

That way you're kind of capturing the before and after growing season, which you can see a lot of change.

And so it makes it more exciting that you've seen change in a six-month period.

Not to mention there is some difference in wildlife that you'll see between those different seasons.

And so being able to sort of capture that in spring and fall can be really interesting.

But you can do it as often as you want and for as long as you want.

Ideally, you would do at least say three years, especially if a restoration project was done.

So you can see those changes, but you can go even longer than that.

And the only other sort of alternative to this would be to capture some before and after data if you're planning a restoration project and hasn't gone in yet, trying to capture maybe a couple seasons before the project actually goes in.

And then after, you'll see the greatest change over time.

I mentioned earlier the wadeable streams.

Quite a few of the questions ask you to get into the stream and interact with it.

So not just standing on the bank and observing.

So if you have a larger stream that you can't access, there might be a couple questions you would need to skip but could still be used and altered if necessary.

You don't necessarily need to be able to walk through the whole stretch of stream, but at least maybe a couple of areas within the stream is going to make it more interactive for you.

Again, hopefully, there's a restoration project.

Examples of those being a riparian buffer, your trees planted along your stream, some live staking, which is what's being demonstrated here in this photo of planting cuttings right into the stream bank plants, stream bank fencing, fencing out of your cattle or improving access in, maybe you have kayak access or something like that and improving and stabilizing that, or a larger floodplain restoration project.

Any of those or others could be considered restoration projects worthy of monitoring.

And, of course, we wanna mention streams, where you have landowner permission to explore.

So this might be your own stream, but if you do have maybe a neighbor that you're like, "You know, I really wanna monitor their stream, get their permission," but some parks and public areas are also places that a lot of our users will use FISH.

And so getting ready to transition over to Ben here is gonna go into a lot more detail on how, but just wanted to mention that we do have a paper version that you can just take out in the field with you and handwrite if that's what you're most comfortable with.

But we also, which is why this is new and improved, is that we have some computer and smartphone ways to enter this data, which is if you've been part of FISH before, we've gone through a couple of iterations over this technology changes over time.

But we're really excited.

I think this is our best one yet and excited to share with you how this all works.

So turn it over to you, Ben.

- Yeah, thanks so much, Kristen.

Yeah, as Kristen mentioned, we have a paper version of what we're calling a datasheet.

And we're also implementing some new digital formats of submitting that datasheet.

So I'm gonna kind of walk you through this new system that we've created, and I hope that you all enjoy it.

So first off, I wanna say that I'm gonna go through a lot of kind of links, and surveys, and other lots of things that you can find on the internet.

But we do have one place that houses all of those links and houses, all of the FAQs, and all of the other information that you may need.

So that web address on the screen right there will take you to the website that is shown on the right-hand side.

And like I said, that's where kind of all of this information will be housed.

So let's get into it.

Yeah, previously, we've been using a couple different softwares and platforms for the FISH data, and we've kind of reworked it to be one singular system here.

So we're using a software called Survey123.

It's pretty popular with these kind of citizen science initiatives.

Some of you may already be familiar with this.

It's super easy.

I have some screenshots here that will look more familiar once you kind of get into this.

But the furthest left screenshot is kind of a landing screen, where when you click our links, it'll ask you if you wanna open that survey in a browser or if you wanna use a field app.

You can do either.

You don't need an another app on your phone on your desktop computer.

You can choose either.

And you also don't need any kind of logins or anything.

So in that middle picture where the red box is, when you get to that page, you'll hit Continue without signing in, and you'll be right there.

And then you'll see the larger two screenshots, that's kind of an environment, what it would look like in the app.

But like I said, you wouldn't necessarily need that app.

You can fill out the entire survey just within a browser.

So there's kind of two steps to the FISH Protocol that we've identified.

The first one is to kind of introduce yourself to the FISH Protocol and make a monitoring site.

So the QR code on the left there, if you scan that, that will take you to our first survey.

And we're calling that the new sampling site survey.

That's where you'll enter some information like your name and your email address, and the date in which you're creating it.

And then as you go through that survey, there'll be a map.

And when you get to that map, you can pan around and zoom in, and you can drop a point right on that map where you're going to be sampling.

And then once complete that, your sampling site is completed and it'll be in the database.

And then you can go onto our next survey, which is where you'll actually enter the data as you visit the site.

So this is where you'll enter all of the data that we'll get into a little bit later.

But yeah, so this QR code will then take you to the actual site visit survey.

So there's two surveys.

They look kind of similar, really, but they have different titles at the top, and you'll see quickly that the questions are very different.

So hopefully, that makes sense.

So you're monitoring location is that place that I mentioned before, that you'll pan around on that map and drop it down.

And then that is where, that location will be attached to further surveys that you do.

So when you start filling out the actual site visit survey, you'll see here in this video, you select your state, your county, and then every site within the county that your site is in will show up.

So if there are, you know, your neighbors are also involved, you'll see their site name too.

So you just wanna make sure that you select your site name and everybody's site name should be relatively unique, so you'll be able to find it.

And then we've also created a map that is accessible on the internet that you can view yours and other's sites live.

So if you forget the name of your site, or, you know, you wanna see who else is sampling your stream, you can come onto this site linked in the QR code in the bottom right hand corner, and you can get some information about that.

You can turn on a couple different layers to see like state and county boundaries.

And we'll be developing this a little bit more once we start getting more data.

So one thing I wanna mention is, you know, as we've said before, there were kind of a couple of different ways that the FISH data had been stored and used.

So as we move forward, were going to start creating new sites for new users, but also users who had a previous site before and submitted monitoring data, you will be able to see your preexisting site.

However, if you created a site in the old framework but never submitted any monitoring data, your site will not show up.

So you can go ahead and create a new one or send us an email if you have any questions about that.

And then I also just want to quickly go over some kind of future ideas and functions that we have for this.

It is still a bit of a work in progress in terms of kind of visualizing the data and everything.

So that's one thing that we're gonna be working on, considering sending out emails to users of their results so that you'll have a record, a copy of your record in your inbox every time that you submit a site visit survey.

And then also making a map kind of similar to the one that I had shown previously of the actual sites.

Right now, that map only shows these sites.

And once we start to get more data, we'll start visualizing actual, you know, kind of responses at those sites.

And then, yeah, I mean, as users start using this tool, we're welcome to thoughts and feedback.

We want it to be as easy and make as much sense as possible.

So please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or comments about the function.

So that will wrap up the data entry side of it.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the chat or the Q and A, and I can answer them as we continue to go along.

- Great, thank you so much, Ben.

That was a great kind of overview of what the app looks like, which will help as we go through kind of the next slides of really what are those data parameters that you'll be collecting if you do the FISH Protocol.

And thank you for all your work in developing that app too.

So we do recommend, you know, we do have this app, and we want you to use it, but we do recommend that the first time you go out to collect data on your stream, that you use the hard copy datasheet.

And the reason for that is, you know, you're going to be, potentially, if this is new to you, you're gonna be learning a new protocol and learning the app.

So it's better to just go out, collect the data on a hard copy datasheet.

We've got a separate instructions document as well, that'll have nice photos that you can see.

And then go home, enter the data into the app and learn the app separately from when you're actually learning the protocol so you don't have to learn both of those at the same time.

So we have a poll question here, and let me launch that.

And so that our poll question is, find it here.

Take a look at these photos.

So hopefully, you're seeing that poll question, seeing some responses come in now.

So which of these photos do you think is the healthiest stream?

And so these are typical of streams you might see throughout Pennsylvania or in the other areas where you live.

I know not everybody tuning in today is from Pennsylvania.

But we frequently see examples of these four and everything in between.

So take a look, I'm gonna see if we can get over 50% participation in this.

I'm gonna give it a few more seconds to take a look at those pictures and see what you think.

All right, just for the sake of time, I know some responses are still coming in, but I'm gonna go ahead and end that poll and share the results.

So, for people that are tuning in through the recording, you won't see the results, so I do wanna go through those really quickly.

The majority of people that participated in the poll, so about 80% did say that photo number two in the top right corner was the healthiest.

But we have responses for all four of those streams.

So you can see that a lot of people think differently when they look at the streams in terms of what makes for a healthy stream.

Now I'm not gonna give you what we might say the healthiest stream is here because that's what we're gonna walk through.

We're gonna walk through the protocol, and that will help you learn how to look at your stream and assess your stream for stream health.

So the first parameter that we're going to look at on your protocol, so the first parameter that you're going to collect data on is water clarity.

So you can see an example of a stream here, where it looks kind of murky, kind of muddy, and it's pretty obvious, you can't see very far into that stream.

So when we're thinking of water clarity, that's probably not a very clear stream, but it's not always clear cut.

So I wanna note here that this is one of the parameters.

This is a parameter that is optional because it is the only question on our protocol where a tool is used, and that's called a transparency tube that you can see in the diagram there.

But if you can purchase or make one of these, or you can reach out to your local extension office if there's a water resources, educator or Master Watershed Steward coordinator in that office, they may have a transparency tube that you can borrow for your surveys.

So let us know, but we do encourage you, if you can, to collect this data and any other data field that is optional because the more data you can collect, the better, more holistic picture you'll have of your stream and any of the impacts on that stream based on land use, changes, or restoration activities.

So for this one specifically, so for water clarity, let's first talk about what water clarity is so that you have an understanding of why we've included it in this protocol.

So water clarity is simply a measure of how transparent or not the water is.

And so it really relates to the amount of sunlight that can pass through the water.

So light is going to be important for all of our living organisms, all living things, but especially, in this case, for the aquatic plants that rely on that sunlight for energy.

So again, sometimes it's obvious that the water is not very clear.

So think about right after a big rainstorm like that previous photo, the water gets very, very murky, very muddy and you can't see very well through it.

But water clarity can be an issue in some streams and rivers, even outside of those situations where there is a heavy rain and it stirs up that water.

And it's not always obvious how clear the water really is.

You may not even notice that there's an issue in some of the shallow waters because the water is so shallow, so you can see down into the stream bottom.

And so we use a transparency tube to standardize our assessment of water clarity and also to help mimic a deeper pool of water so that you don't have to try and go and find a deeper pool of water downstream or upstream.

But again, it also helps to standardize your data collection here.

And what we're really looking at is for rooted aquatic vegetation to survive, a rooted aquatic vegetation can survive in water up to about one meter deep.

Therefore, that's kind of the critical depth when we're thinking about water clarity and the need for sunlight to penetrate the water.

However, even at about 55 centimeters in depth, as the water clarity decreases, it starts to become an issue for our, specifically, our gill-breathing organisms.

So even if your stream, well, and even if your stream isn't that deep, for example, it still can be an issue because remember that this is a flowing system.

So what's happening in your stream, and whether there are suspended sediments in your stream that are clouding up that water, making the water clarity low, you may not see that in a smaller, or excuse me, a shallower stream, but that water is flowing, it's connected and impacting your downstream habitats as well.

So just very briefly, how does the transparency tube work?

So you can see at the bottom, there is this black and white disc.

This black and white symbol that's called a Secchi disc.

And what you'll do is you'll fill up the transparency tube, and then you'll look, see if I can grab my laser tool here.

You're going to look down into the top of that transparency tube down through the water column, the water you've collected to see if you can see that Secchi disc.

Now, if you can see that, great, you note that, you know, you can see the Secchi disc at whatever level this is on your transparency tube.

But if not, you'll use this water release valve here at the bottom to slowly release water out of your tube until just the point where you can see that Secchi disc in the bottom.

And that becomes your water clarity measurement.

You do wanna measure this in centimeters.

You'll see here on the left, or sorry, on the right side image.

This is what the application looks like if you're entering this in your mobile device.

We do want this information in centimeters.

Again, to make sure everybody's collecting data using the same units.

And so, again, this is important on one of the first pages or first questions of your datasheet.

We do ask, and there's a place to note, whether or not there are any recent disturbances like human caused disturbances such as dumping or dredging, or natural disturbances around your stream?

So flooding or a tree falling into your stream.

So when these things happen, you might actually notice changes to things like water clarity and some of the other parameters that you're collecting.

Now I wanted to point this out because this is what kind of the top of the main first investigations of Stream Health article looks like.

And you can see this indexed file here, this indexed list at the top of that article.

If you click on Additional Resources to help you with FISH, it will jump you down to the part of that article that discusses, and it gives you a lot of additional resources, and we'll be even be adding to this as we move forward.

But you'll see that first option under interpreting results is understanding your transparency tube measurements.

So if you really wanna kind of dive deeper into what those transparency tube measurements mean, what they can impact, you can go to that article.

And you can see that here.

So we have a lot of resources to help you out there.

So next in our protocol, we are assessing stream bottom habitat, specifically embeddedness.

So assessing stream bottom habitat is really important because a lot of our organisms that we're gonna be talking about live on the stream bottom or will feed and lay eggs there.

So this is going to be your...

Your embeddedness data field is an evaluation of how much sediment is settling onto the bottom of that stream habitat or onto the bottom of the stream.

So the sedimentation or the accumulation of this sediment in these fine particles in your water that is going to make that water clarity or, and your stream habitat, or sorry, your stream bottom habitat, you know, kind of poor as well.

The excess sediment does come from things like stream make erosion, soil loss from fields and properties.

They're depositing the soil into the bottom of the stream, again, covering up crucial habitat.

It's important to note also that sediment, you know, can also carry with it.

Sediment in itself is a pollutant, but it can also carry with it other pollutants that are attached to the sediment particles, to the soil particles.

So while excess sediment is a form of pollution, it's carrying with it in that stream column, in that stream habitat, additional pollutants as well.

So let's see.

Oh, I need to get rid of my laser pointer here in order to activate our video.

So hopefully, you're seeing the gills of this mayfly moving within those two yellow circles you see there.

We'll activate it again in case you missed it.

But in addition to covering up important, you know, valuable habitat for critters like this mayfly and other organisms, excess sediment can actually clog up the gills of some of our or organisms living in the streams as well like this mayfly.

And the gills are how this may fly is getting oxygen out of the water.

So you can see that that excess sediment would have a big impact on the stream life.

So, this is what it's going to look like.

On the left-hand side, you see what the sheet looks like, the hard copy datasheet.

On the right is more of what it looks like the description on your application.

So for this and several other parameters that you're going to see, you are going to be collecting data on a ranking scale.

So in the case of embeddedness, one is going to be highly embedded, and nine is going to be low embeddedness.

Now to go back to one thing that Kristen mentioned earlier is you wanna remember that these are self-calibrated data points.

So you can view the embeddedness of a stream or how you view the embeddedness of a stream is going to be different from how anybody else might rank the stream.

And so really, we're not talking about doing highly rigorous scientific comparisons between your datasets and another stream's dataset.

You're really looking at the change over time at your site.

Now, I know there was a question that came into the chat already about more than one person collecting data at the same stream.

So when you are going to do that, that is possible to collect data, not only the same stream, but the same site.

But when you're doing that, you do want to go out together initially to essentially self-calibrate or get an average of what these ranking parameters are so that you make sure you've got some consistency there.

Now, you can see on the right, you see a couple of photo examples of different levels of stream embeddedness.

And those will, there will be an area on the map for you to click for these images to pop up so that you have those at hand so you can reference those.

So you have that as kind of a guide to help you out.

And so this is where you would actually, this is what it looks like on the application where you would actually take the number here and kind of drag it to either high embeddedness here, closer to the one or low embeddedness.

And we'll always remind you and tell you, you know, what the one means versus the nine, so you don't have to remember that from survey to survey.

And again, we have more, you know, additional information about embeddedness on our resources links.

So I'm gonna launch our next poll question.

And so I want you to take a look at this.

And here we go.

You are gonna take a look at this, and you are going to rank this one to nine.

Now in your popup window, in order to get to the nine, you might need to scroll if that's where you wanna land this.

So just take note that you might need to scroll through the different options.

And again, one means it's the least healthy, so it's the most embedded, and nine is the most healthy and less embedded.

So we're gonna see if we can get a few more responses in here.

Okay, we've got 60%, so I'm gonna go ahead and end that and share the results.

So if you look at this, we have a range.

So most people are saying that this is between a seven and a nine.

And then you can see that just about every other, you know, one through six except for five, you know, at least one person or a couple people ranked this in a lot of different ways.

So I am going to, now we are going to rank this one.

So again, this is another type of stream that you might see.

So that should have hopped up on your screen there.

And we're gonna see what you think about this one.

Again, you're gonna see a lot of different varieties of embeddedness, a lot of different streams.

So if going out there is new to you, this will kind of give you a new way to look at your streams.

Okay, so I'm gonna end the poll and share our results again.

So we have a little bit more variability, more people, well, we have less variability maybe.

So fewer people are ranking this six to nine.

But with the one through five, there's more variation there.

So it's kind of spread out a little bit more.

So for this one, I'm gonna stop sharing our poll.

So again, you'll see that not everybody will agree on what the ranking is, and that's why it's important that your consistent with your rankings, but it doesn't really matter how somebody else would rank that stream unless you're going to be both collecting data on the same stream.

And that's why you want to kinda calibrate yourselves.

So, how I would rank this, I would rank this closer to like a three or a four, which is on the more embedded, less healthy side of the spectrum.

And that is because based on my experience in streams, I've seen streams where you can't even see the rocks on the bottom of the stream.

So I can still see of those rocks, some of those crevices between the rocks.

I do see a lot of settled sediment, but it's not the worst that I've seen.

I've been in areas where, again, you can't even tell that it's a rocky stream bottom.

But again, my experience in experience with streams may not be your experience.

So you'll have a different perspective, and that's okay.

I'm not going to be comparing my stream data, the data I've collected on my stream with the data that you've collected on your stream.

You are going to be comparing what's going on with your stream over time, and that's what's important.

There we go.

So now we get kind of into my favorite section of the protocol, and that is looking at stream life.

So there's one area of the protocol, where it asks you about macroinvertebrates.

Now, macroinvertebrates are aquatic, or aquatic macroinvertebrates are organisms that are large enough to see with the naked eye.

So they're not microscopic, they're macro, you can see them with the naked eye, and they're invertebrates, so they're lacking a backbone.

So macroinvertebrates, or we call them macros.

So these are invertebrates that live in the water.

They don't tend to move around too much within the stream.

So they're great for researchers to collect and make observations about as well as really easy to teach community science volunteers about how to collect them.

But one of the reasons that they're included in our protocol is because they are terrific indicators of water quality.

So different macros or different macroinvertebrates have different tolerance levels to pollution.

So some are very sensitive to pollution, and some are very tolerant of pollution.

So as a stream improves, as stream health improves, we should see an increase in both species diversity, so how many different kinds of macroinvertebrates you're seeing in the stream, and also, seeing more of those species that are sensitive to pollution.

So really, you wanna see a variety of species.

I do wanna make sure I don't forget to note that the absence of sensitive species alone on a single collection day does not equal a polluted water body.

What you're going to be looking at is change or improvement over time with your macros and in combination with other data parameters.

But if you go out and you do not see a stonefly, which is a macro that is pretty intolerant of pollution.

So it's very sensitive to pollution, you won't find those in very polluted waters.

But if you go out one day and you don't collect, you don't see a stone fly on that day, that in and of itself on that one collection day does not mean that you have a polluted stream.

So really you're looking at the change over time.

Now you don't have to know how to identify macros for this survey.

That's why this survey is great.

It gives you that opportunity to learn how to identify macros, but what is key is that you're looking, if you don't wanna dive in and try to learn them specifically, you can look for and note how many different kinds of organisms you're seeing in the stream.

And are you seeing more or less than you did before?

So maybe the first time, you went out you saw one or two different types of macroinvertebrates, and now you're seeing several different types.

Hopefully, you're not seeing the reverse of that trend, but you are looking at that change over the time.

So you're really looking at the diversity and the abundance of the different types of macros you're seeing in your stream.

Now, if you want to learn how to ID, there are a lot of great resources out there.

We've got one here on the screen for you, Macroinvertebrates.org, which was developed by Stroud Water Research Institute and the Carnegie Institute.

And this is great because they have information on each of the macros, including their tolerance level to pollution.

So that's kind of interesting if you wanna look into that.

And then there are a couple nice phone apps that you can download on your phone to help you with identification as well.

There's one called PocketMacros, which was developed from this Macroinvertebrates.org website.

And if you really wanna kinda dive into this even more and really learn more about how to identify macros and how we, as scientists and researchers, use macros to assess water quality, you can become a Master Watershed Steward.

So if you're interested in that, note that in the chat, and we'll reach out to you about that.

So this is what the data collection again looks like.

On the left, again, you've got your hard copy datasheet, on the right, you've got your app.

So when we have standardized this a little bit.

So if you're familiar with our FISH Protocol, and this is something that you used to do in the past, this is kind of one of those minor changes that we have made where we're standardizing how you're collecting.

So when you go out to look for stream life and look for your macroinvertebrates, you're gonna pick two locations along your stream, and you're going to, in each of those locations, you're gonna flip over five rocks, and you're going to then count and just give a total of the number of aquatic bugs and macrovertebrates you see.

And then if you can identify them, you can note that either on the hard copy datasheet or in the app.

I do want to point out that if you are taking the macros, and you're putting them in containers to identify them, you're sorting them out to identify and see how many you have of each, you do need a fishing license that is a requirement.

So make sure you have that if you're taking them out of the stream, even if you're returning them back to the stream.

But if you're taking them out to kind of sort them like we show here, then you do need your fishing license.

And it's important that not only you're returning the macros to the stream, but when you lift those rocks, you're returning those rocks in the same place and same orientation that you found that rock because that rock is a part of the home or the habitat of lots of different organisms.

So we wanna make sure we put that roof basically back on that home for those organisms.

You are also going to be looking for amphibians.

So you might see salamanders, you might see some frogs out there.

So you're gonna be looking over, you know, a portion of your stream, not just in the stream but around the stream.

And really, you're trying to capture a whole view of the area to tell more about the complete story of the health of your stream.

So where are you going to find these?

Well, you are gonna look under, again, you're gonna look under those rocks.

So when you lifted those instream rocks looking for your macros, you might see something like we had here on the left-hand side, that long-tailed salamander.

You might see that scurry out from under a rock within your stream, but you also wanna lift some of the rocks that are on the shore, roll some of your logs and look under there.

They're gonna be great places for you to find amphibians.

Another note is that when you first roll over your log or you're flipping over a rock, roll the logs, roll the rocks towards you to protect yourself in case there's a snake or something else under there, it's going to then move away from you, not towards you.

And then you can kind of get in there and look more closely.

But again, we wanna replace all logs and rocks exactly how you found them.

Oh.

Oh, okay.

So you also wanna look for fish.

It'd be a great idea to actually look for fish before you even enter the stream.

But there's a place on there for you to note, again, if you can identify the fish, great, but even if not, you can note how many different types of fish you saw in your stream.

So again, we wanna get that picture of the organisms and the stream life using the stream and kind of monitor that over time.

And hopefully, as your stream health improves, you're going to see an improvement and a increase in diversity of your stream life.

So this is what it looks like on the datasheet versus the app.

So one of the things that I forgot to note with the amphibians is that you are looking, there, again, we're standardizing how you're collecting this and you're going to be looking at three different locations, six feet by six feet locations for each of those three locations when you're looking for your amphibians.

So you're gonna standardize that a little bit, and then you know you're going to enter a total count again and note the species if you can.

And with that, I am going to turn it over to Katie.

- Thanks, Natalie.

Yeah, so now we're jumping out of the instream community, and we're gonna be looking at some of the vegetation in the surrounding land use.

So stream ecology includes the interactions of all organisms.

And in this instance, we're talking mostly about freshwater stream communities, but I could also see this being utilized for a tidal ecosystem as well.

But that includes like the instream organisms that Natalie was just talking about, but then other wildlife and the elements in the surrounding landscape like the vegetation and also how water interacts with that vegetation and the surrounding topography of the land.

So you can see here, we have high eroding stream banks in this one picture, and this is demonstrating really no vegetation that's holding that soil in place.

And in contrast, on the other side, we're showing stable banks with an ecosystem and soil that's covered with vegetation.

And we can think of this in two ways.

In terms of velocity, the lateral flow of the stream and the velocity moving downstream of that water cuts into the bank and removes from that soil.

But then the overland flow also can impact soil stabilization and can, what we call head cut or undercut the bank, and remove some of that soil, and it will fall into the stream, you know, creating sedimentation in the water column and decreased habitat with the instream organisms.

So a really fast moving water can erode the banks on either side of the stream, and erosion causes the loose soil to break free, and that can be transported downstream.

Established vegetation on the other side, which is where we show these stable banks, can help prevent this from happening.

And so the next section that we wanna talk about is riparian buffer width.

And so this is all about measuring the riparian buffers that's on your site.

So like we've been saying, this project really calibrates the FISH survey for your site.

So you are looking at your buffer area on every stream regardless of whether it's planted or not.

Whoops. Are the slides moving correctly?

There we go.

Yep, just the buffer width the one.

- [Natalie] Okay, are you good?

- I think I'm moving them okay, yeah.

- [Natalie] Okay, I don't know what happened there.

- Okay, yeah, I'm moving them all right, I think.

Yeah, so again, so you wanna look at your site and the buffer width on your site, whether it's planted or not.

So if it's forested and there's what we call woods, wherever the human disturbance begins is where you wanna measure too.

So you can see here that there is an existing buffer on this stream, and this stream corridor runs through this woodlot here.

And then you can see the buffer width and then out to the roadway.

So in this case, it's about 80 feet that we're gonna be looking at.

And so even if you mow a certain area, so you would be measuring from the edge of that stream bank to where you were mowing or the planted riparian buffer in the location.

If there's a stream bank fence on some agricultural sites, that would take that into account as well.

A riparian buffer, overall, the why we're studying this is because it's a practice that's used to accomplish a lot of ecosystem services, and that includes reducing the transport of sediment in overland flow from surface water and reduce transport of pathogens, chemicals, any runoff that has pollutants from that roadway there.

It would be captured in that buffer before meeting that stream.

So it improves the quality of the water, it improves terrestrial habitat as well as the aquatic ecosystem, and it can restore diversity along the stream corridor, which includes the structure and the function of that riparian corridor.

Really, the composition of the plant community can impact the terrestrial environment as well in a positive way.

And we can think of it also as creating green corridors, a connected landscape where migratory wildlife has access to food, forage, and cover while they're migrating through our landscape.

And so now, we have a poll question.

And so we wanna know what you all think about this vegetated cover on the stream bank.

Look at the ground surface and how much is exposed.

And so what is the percentage of the ground surface that is covered by vegetation?

And it's an estimate of a percent of vegetation that's visible.

- [Natalie] So Katie, we're at 63% participation.

You want me to end?

- Okay, yep, you can end the poll.

Okay, I can see the results.

So it's a little mixed, but looks like most of the respondents have a 51% to 73%.

And so that jives with what I would answer as well.

Whenever I'm looking at vegetated cover, I try to look at the bare spots, and then take them all together, and create a square, and see how much of that square, those bare spots, are taking up.

And that helps me get a percentage of how much cover is actually covering the ground surface.

And this really impacts the stream corridor because of that rooted material.

Typically, native plants that are adapted to the soil and hydrology conditions of a certain landscape have deep rooted material that captures, not only the overland flow, but it also helps infiltrate into the ground.

Okay, so this question is pretty subjective, but like we said, we're calibrating it to your landscape and to your project.

And so the leaf litter that comes from deciduous trees and the riparian zone, it covers the soil, and it decreases the velocity of that water running off of the landscape.

And that's really what we're getting at here.

Okay, so for the riparian zone, now we're looking more at the quality of the landscape.

Is it mostly grass, or is it grass and a shrubby mix?

Or is it mostly mature trees?

And so we can see here with this mowed, mostly grass landscape, we can see how the water velocity would run off of that landscape and into the stream rather quickly.

It can also cause what we would calling head cutting.

So as the water flows over that slope of the stream bank, it can spend more time on one spot and continue to erode away that soil.

And that soil again flows into the stream system and can cause issues with downstream habitat and embeddedness of the stream bottom.

In contrast, we have a mature forest, higher plant diversity, and we can see that there is connectivity between the flood plain here and the stream system.

And so that rooted material holds the soil in place, it stabilizes that bank and also provides shade within the canopy of those trees and shrubs.

And so it shades that environment, which keeps water cooler, which is really important for water quality.

And some of our fish species really require cold habitats, including our trout who live in Pennsylvania and our eastern brook trout who are our only natives trout in Pennsylvania.

But we also have naturalized brook trout fisheries as well as stocked rainbow fisheries.

And so cool water is really important in that respect.

All right, we're gonna go to the next slide.

And so we were talking about deciduous trees losing their leaves.

Those leaves fall into that stream community, and it's a really important food resource for a lot of the macroinvertebrates that Natalie was talking about.

We call some of this leaf litter detritus.

It creates a leaf mat, and those macroinvertebrates find homes and cover and also forage from those leaf litter as well.

So it's really food for the entire stream ecosystem, and it lays a foundation for a lot of other organisms.

And so this is really showing a food web, but we have algae and detritus.

Some of the more herbivorous macroinvertebrates would utilize that as a food resource.

But then we also have omnivorous macroinvertebrates, and those include a species called a hellgrammite, which is a larval stage as a dobsonfly or dragonfly larvae that are more omnivorous.

So they would eat detritus and algaes, but then also smaller macroinvertebrates.

And then going up there, we see that there's smaller omnibus fish.

And so they would eat everything down from the algae to detritus to those macroinvertebrates and then going up to the larger carnivorous fish.

And in our communities here in Pennsylvania, those species would include the larger trout species and bass species, and going up the food chain.

So it's really a food chain, but it's also the interactions of all of those organisms with each other, and so it becomes a food web.

But the leaf litter is one of the most important components of that.

And so when we're talking about instream macroinvertebrate habitat and providing food for organisms, we also wanna include what's called large woody debris or LWD, there's acronyms for everything.

But really, large woody debris creates really good instream habitat environments, and not only providing food resources, but also cover So large woody debris is any fallen tree, or log, or branches that are at least about four inches wide and six feet deep in the water, or they can also lay over the top of the water to provide cover.

It adds valuable wildlife habitat, but really beneficial for the stream community.

Like we were saying, it provides shade and cover from predators for fish, even those riffles over or under large water debris, it forces that water to move through and forces more air bubbles into the water column, which creates a more highly oxygenated environment.

And also, like we were saying, the breakdown of plant material offers detritus and food for our macroinvertebrate communities.

In other characteristics of large order debris, during high times of high water, it also helps to decrease that water velocity and capture some sediment in some of the pockets that are either behind or in front of the large woody debris, and it captures that sediment before getting into the water column and before going downstream.

So it also, large woody debris, as you can see here in this picture is it acts as a connector between the stream and the floodplain.

So it really forces high flows into the nearby floodplain and allowing that floodplain to do its job.

Floodplains are there to collect and infiltrate some excess water, allow for sediment to deposit there, and it allows nutrients to be spread throughout the landscape and become bioavailable to a lot of the organisms who live in our stream community.

And like Natalie was talking about all the organisms, it also include reptiles and amphibians.

And so large woody debris provides basking platforms for reptiles, as well as roosting platforms for birds.

So it's just really beneficial to the ecology as a whole.

All right, and then as we're talking about large debris, so some of the other areas that we can look at along the shoreline include the vegetative community, and that can include everything from the canopy cover to the herbaceous level.

And so we wanna talk about how native plants along our stream corridor really provide crucial food and nesting resources for wildlife and insects.

And so a lot of, for instance, our bird community within Pennsylvania and beyond throughout the whole world, they utilize different food types throughout their life cycles.

And so, for instance, when a lot of our songbirds are rearing young, the majority of them will need insect life to feed their juvenile birds and to have really high nest fecundity moving forward.

So insects are really the foundation of their reproductive ability.

And where do we get insects from?

We get them from native plant communities.

And so that's why it's so important to think of the composition of your plant community, along your stream corridor as well.

And then we also wanna talk about snags.

So a snag is just a dead standing tree.

And we were talking about large wood debris.

So I wanna make that connection that, at some point in a snags lifecycle, it can become large woody debris if it happens to fall in that stream community.

And so that really is important for the stream environment.

And if it's a not a safety issue and that snag can fall, then it would be really beneficial.

So when a snag is still standing, it really good nesting and roosting habitat for lots of wildlife species.

It provides habitat for insect life.

And so just think of a woodpecker trying to find food, and oftentimes that you can see them on a snag, pecking into that wood and finding insects to eat.

And so I think we have another...

Oh, and so this is just, I wanted to show how it's gonna look on a paper version versus your web version.

And so when you are looking at the vegetation, we were talking about bank cover and also in the riparian zone.

And so for the bank cover, you would be ranking both sides of the bank.

So when you're looking downstream, you have the left bank and the right bank.

And so you're estimating the entire bank cover of vegetation on a scale of one to nine.

And one meaning no cover.

So it's really exposed, there's no vegetation, and then nine is completely covered, has really good root material and is rooted and stabilized into that bank.

And then when we're looking at native plants, you just wanna look at the percentage of the vegetation at your site that is native.

And so this can be an estimate if you're not super familiar with native or invasive vegetation.

But we have lots of apps now that can help us determine what is native and what is not, and really good resources in Penn State Extension.

So if anyone has any questions about that, use those resources.

And then for the snags, we're tallying the number of snags.

One of the main ways that we identify change over time is the change in the vegetation community really impacts the instream life.

And so that's where we're getting at when we're collecting all of this information.

And then the large woody debris, do you notice any debris material in the stream and was it more or less than last time?

And what is the change over time?

And again, this is the difference, and this is what it would look like if you were on the app.

So very similar, but now you have the ability to use this button here to drag and drop your number on the poll if you are using the Survey123 version.

Oh, okay, so now, we're up to our next question.

So poll question five is after we've been talking about all of these characteristics of stream community, let's try to rate the riparian buffer in this picture from the least healthy, which is would be a one, and then to the most healthy, which would be a nine.

- [Natalie] Katie, we're again at like 62.

Is that good? - Sounds good.

Yeah, I think in the interest of time, we'll move ahead.

So the results here show that most, let's see, most people rank this as a seven.

And so that's almost to the most healthy.

And then the majority of other people said eight, and then we had some nines, and around 18% said number six.

So I really like the direction that everyone was going in with those answers.

And the reason being is that this is a pretty healthy stream corridor system.

You can see that there's not highly eroded stream banks.

The floodplain, in general, is pretty connected to that stream environment.

So if there was excess water in that stream corridor, it would be able to communicate with the floodplain and the water would get up into the flood plain and infiltrate and be absorbed.

The reason why it's not a nine or like really high is because there's really just lack of canopy cover.

And so the shrubby materials here, they don't form an interlocking canopy over top of the stream corridor in order to shade that water.

However, these rubbery materials are very beneficial for a lot of songbirds.

and you can see some of the exposed bank here, where I was going with that, is beneficial for some migratory shorebirds who would be eating some of the macroinvertebrate species as they're migrating through the landscape.

And so that's why we wouldn't really rank it as number nine, but it's in that six, seven, eight category.

All right, I'm gonna move on to the next slide.

And so as we're talking about the stream community, it's an interaction between all of the wildlife and species who are utilizing that corridor and stream systems provide habitat for many mammals as well, including what we can see are our raccoons.

And they play a really important role in the ecosystem, and I've heard them called ecosystem gardeners.

And so they offer us pest control by eating some of our more pesky insects and their cleanup crews.

So they consume carrion or remains of decaying animals, as well as small rodents and as well as insects.

And so they're omnivores, and they eat almost anything.

And sometimes, their diet, depending on their lifecycle and where they are seasonally, can really be robust with macroinvertebrates, and mussels, and crustaceans, and what they can find in the stream ecosystem.

And they're also predators for some of the clams and mussels that we were talking about.

And they serve as prey items for species like owls, hawks, raptors, coyotes, wolves and snakes.

And so, they are a sort of glue in the ecosystem that holds predator prey relationships together.

And then you can see in this photo here a red fox, and we have two species of fox in Pennsylvania.

We have the red fox and the gray fox.

The red are slightly smaller in size and the gray are larger, but they're both opportunistic feeders.

So they both feed on mice and rats, rabbits, possums, porcupines, and insects as well.

And so they really need that riparian corridor to travel along a stream ecosystem to forge, find, cover, and reproduce and find food for their young.

And other wildlife, we see the white-tailed deer here.

In Pennsylvania, we have a long history with the species of deer.

And they are really edge species, so what we call edge species, meaning that the edge of a meadow or a field, and then a woodlot or a riparian corridor with a wooded forested corridor.

So a lot of the deer cruise those edge landscapes to find food and sort of chew off what they can find in the woodlot or overhanging branches or foraging deeper down into the shrub community as well.

And so we're providing riparian corridor habitat for white-tailed deer as well.

And in some instances, good forage habitat to keep our white-tailed deer population healthy.

And other signs of wildlife, we wanna look for scat, and tracks, or nests that we see in some of the riparian trees and branches.

In addition to scat and tracks, we could also look for things like owl pellets.

If you have owls utilizing your forested landscape, sometimes, at the base of a tree you can see an owl pellet, which is just something that they really cough up, and it's the bones of the species that they were eating.

And so in a lot of school systems, we can dissect owl pellets and see what they've been eating, which is really interesting.

You could also look for things like crayfish burrows, which would indicate really, really wet ecosystems, and mussel and clams as well, just empty shells that even a raccoon would be consuming along the shoreline and then they sort of deposit what they don't want anymore.

But that can give you clues as to who is utilizing your landscape, and then you can start to identify changes time of if you see new tracks or new type of scat.

It can be really interesting to observe who is utilizing your landscape.

And then you can sort of think about why they're utilizing your landscape.

Do you have certain food sources that they really like?

Can you plant more native plants that might attract more of the species that you are looking for or would create more of a biodiverse environment in your riparian area?

And so this is what it would look like if you had the paper version to identify some wildlife scat, tracks, and signs of other wildlife.

And then in contrast, this is on the my right-hand side, this is what it would look like if you were utilizing the Survey123.

So you can check off some of the species that you're seeing.

You're asked if you're seeing any tracks or scat and then any other signs of animals that are present.

And you can also write notes about what you're seeing as well.

And so some of the other species that we all like to see in our landscape are birds.

And so the identification of birds is really a lifelong skillset.

But we have a lot of apps including the Merlin app that you could utilize to identify bird song and see which types of birds are in your landscape.

And you can see here that we have a cedar waxwing.

And so if you see one of those species, the cedar waxwing in your riparian area, you can pretty much say, well, there's really good shrubby material here that this bird likes to roost in, and there's really good food species that I've provided for this bird.

And so cedar waxwings feed on a variety of berries.

But like we were saying, these birds also utilize insects while they're rearing their young.

And so they need a community that has an abundance and diversity of insect life as well.

If you were perhaps to see a green heron, they mostly eat fish, and they would eat small minnows as well, sunfish, crayfish, and other crustaceans, as well as aquatic insects, frogs, maybe a tadpole thrown in there.

So they have a diverse food diet, and they are species that really need some of this overhanging vegetation to roost on so that they can see into the water for their food.

And for instance, if you were to see a red-breasted merganser, they primarily eat fish but also crustaceans and insects.

And so this is a diverse community of bird life, but really it tells you many clues about what's happening in your landscape.

And again, this is what the survey would look like if you had the paper form versus the Survey123 form, so very similar.

It would just be a checkoff of which species you see.

And so this would change seasonally, but one of the biggest ways to improve some of the avian life that you have in your riparian corridor is to plant native plants.

And that would include native trees or native herbaceous cover with lots of great snags and overhanging branches that they can roost and find forge habitat in, as well as migratory birds who are really need to bulk up and have a lot of very diverse food resources as they're traveling through our landscape.

Other observations, we have a note section for that.

And so that would include snapping turtles, reptiles, such as the eastern box turtle who utilize riparian corridors and some of the wetter woodlots in our ecosystems.

And then snapping turtles who are more aquatic species, but they do come out of that aquatic environment to nest during that time of year when they're nesting.

And so very good observations to put in there as well.

And so I think I'll turn it back over to Jen, and we'll wrap up here.

So thanks, everyone.

- Great, Katie, thank you so much for all of that awesome information about the stream edge habitat.

So just a couple little wrap up things here, thinking about how to use this, right?

So you've heard all about the data that we collect, the tool that we use to collect it.

So what can you use it for and why might you use it?

You know, part of this is just thinking about your own property, or your own stream, or one that you have a direct relationship to because you're a steward for public property, or community, or for a particular watershed, but it is to help you track changes over time, good, bad, ugly, whatever those changes might be, to be able to have a tool to really record that, not just, oh, it seemed so much better before when I was a kid, but an actual in digital or paper format record of how the stream is actually changing.

And what that does is a lot of things.

It helps to engage you, and your community, and your family in observing the stream, enjoying the stream, becoming a little more intimately involved in it, hopefully, attracting young people around you and the next generation to be just as interested in and involved in that stream.

Gives you the opportunity to explore some variables that perhaps weren't in your skillset before.

So maybe you are an avid backyard bird watcher, but you've never really thought about the aquatic life before.

And so you get a little more interested in learning about the bugs in the stream, or the fish, or the salamanders, but just helping you explore your own science knowledge, and then taking the stories that you learn.

So I did this for my stream, perhaps you planted some more trees, or you helped to increase the score for your riparian buffer by adding new or different kinds of vegetation.

And you start to notice the wildlife changing or the instream water quality changing.

And it gives you a real story to tell to your neighbors, to your township officials, to your family and friends, to others that you are helping to think about stream health as well.

When we are just making anecdotal observations, we really can't call that science.

It's complicated, it's difficult, but when we can record it, and we can measure change over time.

It helps us to really present true data to others about why we might do things differently or think about things differently.

It's also a great excuse to get outside and get some peace and quiet time to yourself if you need that excuse to step away from the hustle and bustle of life.

And then just thinking about using it as a group also, not just as an individual.

So if you do represent some public lands, or you're part of a watershed association, or a water steward of some sort, you can use this tool as a group of volunteers or even as a group of professionals to monitor the impacts of an actual restoration project that took place.

You can use it as a way to actively engage volunteers who maybe haven't found a role for themselves in your organization yet.

You can use it to collect stories and then use those stories in your newsletters or in other promotional maybe social media posts to help promote future restoration projects.

You can use that to attract workshop participants to come and be part of the things that you're doing.

You can use it with a group of youth or a group of adults as a public program for your organization.

Kind of the world is your oyster.

What we do with the data, and we talked about that a little bit, but is not much, right?

We're using it to help manage stories ourself.

So the ways that we can help encourage others to become more connected to their streams, we use it as a tool to help people stay engaged with their stream after a restoration project has taken place, which encourages better long-term maintenance of their projects.

We use it to think about how the community and how everyday community members are interacting with streams and what they consider to be healthy and unhealthy to help us identify what future education might be done, like Yvonne mentioned about debris removal.

So we have quite a bit of opportunity to use that data in science, but we really want you to use your own personal data in that process as well.

So this link to the site, again, on the screen and in the chat, Natalie just reposted it for everybody on how to get to this information.

I'll mention too as well, we have a very in-depth series on backyard stream repair starting at the end of next month.

It goes through September.

This is a series we've done before.

It's an excellent five-part series plus a publication and an opportunity to participate in some other resources.

Well, sorry, I'm just gonna put that back up on the screen for a second.

Somebody advanced that on me.

But a really wonderful opportunity if you're having issues with a eroding stream in your backyard, small residential stream, or on public lands that you'd like to learn techniques on how to repair that, please join us for that.

We'll talk about fish there briefly, but it's mostly new content.

We do have a survey specifically for today's webinar and the FISH tool.

We hope that you'll provide some feedback for.

You're gonna get automatically directed to the survey for the Water Cooler Talks.

If you've been here before, it's similar survey, and that's the one to get your completion certificate.

But if you're willing to share with us just a little bit of input about the FISH tool and your overall evaluation, we'd appreciate that as well.

You can set up for our newsletter, and we thank you.

And we'll just handle a handful of questions that we haven't already addressed in the Q and A and then go back to the chat for anything else there as well.

So some questions for the team.

Folks, there was one question, Katie, maybe you have...

I see you're typing an answer to it now, but I thought maybe we could talk about it live instead, which was about seasonal stocking programs and whether or not they have an impact on stream health.

- Seasonal fish stocking, I suppose, is what we wanna talk about.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, fish stocking, it certainly would have an impact because it's introducing another species into an environment.

However, those entities that are doing those stocking programs have really studied deeply the stream ecosystem and the community that they're stocking into.

And so they're well aware of the changes that are occurring.

And it's not always a negative manner.

Stocking community could really supply a recreational benefit to a lot of our communities surrounding in Pennsylvania.

And so they study the science and the ecology prior to implementing any stocking programs.

So yeah, it does change it, but not necessarily in a negative manner.

And you can reach out to, in Pennsylvania Fish & Boat, Pennsylvania DEP would all have information about stocking programs to learn more.

- Great. Thank you.

Kristen, there's a question you wanted to answer.

We had a handful of questions about places along the stream, how you know where to observe and how long.

And so I think maybe we can tie all that into one big answer here.

- Yeah, probably should add a slide to this into the presentation for the future on identify where you're monitoring your stream.

So there isn't a standard length.

We have sometimes used like a hundred feet or some different links as guides because it really depends on your property.

If you're measuring the stream on your property and you only own 50 feet of it, then I would say measure the 50 feet of it because that's what you have access to versus if maybe it is more of a park setting or you do have a larger property and have access to a much longer length of stream, do you really wanna take the time necessarily to wander that property every time that you wanna go out and do this?

So picking a length of stream that gives you a chance to see multiple different habitats gives you an average of what's happening across the stream in this area that captures maybe the restoration project that you have going on, but also has some landmarks that help you remember where your start and end of your section is.

So whether that's a large tree, a boulder, a bend in the stream, a fence row, your property boundary, some sort of landmarks that help you remember where you're going back so you're observing the same section of stream over time.

- Ben, there's a question in the chat.

I think it's great for you.

Once you register a property as a site and start submitting data, how is your data then accessible to you?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

And I briefly mentioned it in the kind of future ideas.

Right now, we don't have a way for you to actually see the data that you've submitted.

That's why we recommended that, you know, if you really want to remember your data right now, right at the start, you can fill out that paper datasheet.

But in the future, we'll be sending emails to the email that's registered with the site, and that will have all of your responses in there, and that'll just come back to your inbox in a file that you'll have for your records.

And then as we start to get more and more responses, we'll make a map that will kind of show where responses have been submitted, but right now we just don't have any data.

So the more you guys fill it up, you know, the more priority I'll put on it and making it available for everyone.

- And we appreciate everybody's patience.

It was a bit of a bit of a curve ball for us when we found out our previous data host was going offline very suddenly.

And so we we're really grateful for the quick work that Ben did with Katie and the whole team to develop a new tool right away so we can keep this tool alive and keep data collection going.

And so, like he said, let's get some data in there, and that'll help us to make sure that it is accessible data for all of you in the future.

We're coming to the end of the time, so I would say if you've got questions and you need to leave, you're more than welcome to reach out to us.

You're gonna get a follow up email with the recording of the webinar.

We'll send the links to the tool, and to the instructions, and all of the information that you need in that email, and you can always kind of reach back out then if there are questions that you still haven't an gotten answered.

I promised Bill and Jim, I would try to address this transparency tube question.

So I do wanna just try to touch on that a little bit in a broad answer that I think will help answer a lot of your questions, which is we're about specific protocol data points, right?

This tool isn't designed to measure stream health using just a single data point, but it also isn't designed to measure stream health requiring every single data point.

We provide you with a broad spectrum of things that you can observe and measure.

You just may not have any interest at all in birds or maybe like you have a fear of birds, and you just don't want anything to do with that.

You don't have to record about birds while you're out measuring the stream.

But if all you do is go out and measure the weather each day and maybe the width of the riparian buffer, you're not gonna see much change 'cause your buffer's not gonna change with very rapidly over time, and it's not gonna tell you very much about the total health of your stream.

So we encourage you to find variables within each of the categories, the water quality, the instream life, the streamside vegetation, the wildlife, and find different variables that work for you and make sure you measure those same things over time to help you see that broad spectrum.

That said, with transparency tubes, if you can't find one, you don't have access to one, do not panic, you can skip that step.

You can just leave it out of the protocol.

They are available for sale through a variety of what we would call like school supply, science supply type websites.

They'll cost you somewhere in the order of 40 to $100 depending on how fancy you get and how big of a transparency tube you wanna order.

There are some people's guidance online about how to make one yourself.

That's also an option, although those can be really challenging to find the supplies and materials for.

But they're out there.

And as some people mentioned, there are programs that'll probably let you borrow a transparency tube.

Maybe there's a school classroom, a nature center, a state park, a water monitoring volunteer group, like a Watershed Association, Master Watershed Stewards, and I think somebody mentioned any kind of ALLARM stream team group.

Here in Pennsylvania, that ALLARM group is an alliance for for water quality monitoring also.

And there's lots of volunteer groups that have been trained by them.

So that's where you would find tubes like that.

But please try not to take any one variable too seriously and knock yourself out if you're struggling with it.

let it go or find a different variable to explore in the future.

And we look forward to seeing all of your FISH stories.

So thank you all for joining us today and have a wonderful afternoon.

- Thank you, guys.