Stories

Dr. William Strosnider, an associate professor at the University of South Carolina and the Director of the Belle W. Baruch Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, brought his class to Carolina Wildlands Foundation for a weekend long camping Trip. Two nights and three days filled with long hours of field work, dinner around the campfire, and starlit nights. Dr. Strosnider’s class is a special topics course titled “Watershed Monitoring and Management”. His inspiration for this class was none other than Thompson Creek! Dr. Strosnider has been consulting our water quality division on developing a permanent monitoring program for Thompson Creek. He agreed that Thompson Creek was such a special place, why not design a class about it and spend a weekend camping alongside the creek.

Throughout the semester, the students have been learning the ins and outs of watershed monitoring and management. From measuring techniques to surface water monitoring to types of contaminants. The students studied long and hard preparing for this field trip. This weekend was a chance for them to apply their knowledge in the field. To get their hands dirty and experience the thrill of watershed monitoring.

Friday night, everyone arrives and gets settled in, trying to decide the best spot to pitch their tent. For the rest of the night everyone got comfortable around the campfire, shared funny college stories, and ate quesadillas for dinner. As the night grew later the students eventually made their way into their tents. They were going to need a lot of rest consider Saturday was going to bring all day fun in the field. Saturday morning came and the students spent most of the time calibrating each piece of equipment. Calibrating is important to ensure quality assurance and quality control when doing environmental sampling. Everyone took turns and practiced this important step, making sure to have completed it correctly or the data collected later that day would be contaminated. A quick lunch break, then it was time to load up the UTVs and make our way to Thompson Creek.

The sun was high and bright in the sky but for early spring the creek was still a little cool even with waders on. The students made notes of the weather, and the creek site conditions in their notebooks before opening the equipment. First was the YSI handheld meter. This is a meter with probes attached to the end of a cable that measure pH, dissolved oxygen (DO), conductivity, and temperature. Next, was to master the skill of using a sample pole. A sample pole is very useful in environmental sampling. It helps those achieve a proper representative unit. After obtaining a water sample, part of it was used to test the turbidity of the water with a turbidity meter. The other part of the sample was used in a colorimeter. Which is a fancy word for equipment that measures the compounds in water. For Thompson Creek, we were testing for nitrate and phosphorus. All results were well within water quality parameter limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The final part of this sampling event was to use a FlowTracker. This is used to calculate the flow rate of the creek. When choosing a spot in the creek to test for flow rates it is ideal to pick one that is straight for ten times the width of the creek. Sometimes it takes some exploring. After deciding on a spot, it was time to hang a measuring tape from bank to bank. When flow tracking, it is ruled to have a total of 10-20 measurements to calculate the average accurately. The site the students chose was 30 feet wide. Starting at the left bank, the students each took turns operating the wading rod and taking measurements every two feet. When they made it to the right bank, they had a total of 16 measurements. Thankfully with modern technology, the meter attached to the wading rod calculates the flow rate in the field within minutes. Thompson Creek was flowing one and half feet per second. Now that doesn’t seem fast but when standing in the creek and watching objects in the water float downstream, you realize just how fast the creek is moving.

The day had ended, and it was time to pack up the equipment, and head back to camp. Another night spent sitting by the campfire, cooking dinner, and reminiscing on nights in their own beds. Sunday was spent cleaning the equipment and packing up to head back to USC. Dr. Strosnider and his students were thankful to experience the wonderful joys here at our biological field station. Maybe camping will become the new classroom.

 Author: Anna Privette