Why Adopt A Stream?
Written by Dr. Checo Colon-Guad, Associate Professor of Biology at Georgia Southern University Freshwater ecosystems such as rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands provide us with clean drinking water, food, and recreational opportunities. Arguably, we depend on clean water for the quality of life we enjoy and on adequate quantity of clean water to sustain daily living. Yet these resources are increasingly threatened by human demand on freshwater resources. Human caused changes to freshwater ecosystems have led to increased rates of habitat and species losses that put at risk the unique services these systems provide. This crisis demands an increasing need for knowledge that can help balance our needs with the needs of our ecosystems. Freshwater scientists in government agencies, academic institutions, private consultants, and similar entities are tirelessly working to obtain this information and achieve a common goal of preserving our freshwater ecosystems. Unfortunately, these folks cannot cover the entirety of our state at the same time to provide assessment of out freshwater resources. Preserving the quality of our waters requires the cooperation of multiple stakeholders from government agencies, businesses, private organizations, and each one of us as citizens. One way we make a difference is by contributing to the efforts that assess the health and condition of our waterways. The Georgia Adopt-A-Stream (GA AAS) program provides a mechanism for citizens to be part of these efforts. GA AAS is a volunteer monitoring program coordinated by the state’s Department of Natural Resources to oversee the collaborative efforts of citizen scientists to observe and report on the conditions of our local rivers and streams. Through this program citizens from across all areas of the state can provide a watchful eye on the status of their local watershed and collectively can provide an initial assessment of the health and condition of states freshwater resources. The GA AAS program’s goals are to increase public Awareness, collect quality baseline Data, gather Observations, facilitate Partnerships between citizens and local governments, and provide Tools and Training. These goals can be easily remembered by the acronym ADOPT and the overarching theme of the program can be seen as encouraging a collective effort to embrace the responsibility of maintaining the integrity of our state’s freshwater resources. The program offers hands-on activities for citizens to get involved in monitoring their local watersheds. These activities include visual surveys, chemical and biological monitoring, organized clean-ups, and other outreach activities. Citizens can get involved by simply ‘adopting’ or registering their local stream and recording observations (i.e., visual surveys) of the current conditions of the system. Citizens can also go a step further and become certified monitoring volunteers of the program by completing training workshops to collect quality data on the chemical characteristics of the waterbody and its biological attributes. Certified volunteers may conduct monthly data for chemical and bacterial monitoring of the system and quarterly (i.e., seasonal) data for some of the biological attributes of the system (e.g., aquatic macroinvertebrates) that inform on the diversity of pollution sensitive versus pollution tolerant groups inhabiting the system. Together, these data provide valuable information that helps government agencies and conservation groups better manage our local waterways. Ultimately, the information gathered by programs like GA AAS helps in the development of educational materials, watershed management plans, and is even used to lead restoration efforts. There are over two-thousand active GA AAS volunteers, more than 700 active monitoring sites, and over four-thousand monitoring events each year. Yet, there’s still more work that can be done and many more miles of streams that can use our help. It can all start with you! Links to websites and videos: Georgia Adopt-A-Stream Find your local GA AAS coordinator It all begins with you – GA AAS video
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June 2019
CategoriesSupported by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine under the Grant Agreement: 20000G9576
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