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Environmental Science Field Study

Underneath the surface of any of the many rivers and streams that fill our landscape lives another world. A tiny ecosystem of predator and prey, flora and fauna can be found that constitutes a living barometer. This barometer indicates the health of not only the body of water but also of the passing fields it touches. A sampling of the fauna that thrives in a river gives us a clearer picture of the true vitality of a river. For the past 13 years, students of West have been a part of the River Watch Project of the Hennepin County Conservation District (HCCD). Their role in River Watch is to monitor the Crow River as it passes through Rockford, Minnesota. Each spring and fall the students complete a site analysis instrument and collect macroinvertibrates (translation: bugs) samples from the river bottom in three riffle locations. Back in the classroom, 100-300 of the individual organisms are identified down to the family via a dichotomous key. By gauging the pollution tolerance of the identified bugs and looking at the site analysis, the quality of the stream is measured and compared to previous years. The fieldwork takes up most of an afternoon and four forty-minute class periods are spent on the lab work.