TABLE OF CONTENTS
Stopping Global Warming
and Saving the Eel River
Letter from SCWA to Santa Rosa
Citizens Monitoring the Eel
Joanna Horvath Hoffman
FOER intern for summer 2006
Friends of the Eel River has just begun a year-long citizens monitoring project, and we are asking the good citizens of the Eel River watershed to participate in an interactive way to help save the river! Folks will observe what happens to the river over the course of a year and see how the land and life are affected by changes in the river system. The information gathered by participants will create a panoramic view of the river and her tributaries, and it will also be used to help in the development of a comprehensive River Management Plan.
We began the project in September 2006 with local informational meetings in five areas of the mainstem Eel River – Alderpoint, Garberville, Fortuna, Willits, and Upper Lake.
The next step is holding workshops. The workshops will be held locally at a centrally-located site, in and around neighborhood streams. Workshops will be held seasonally as we monitor different aspects of river health and dynamics. The first workshops will be held in October/November, and the focus will be on how to photo-document your land and stream, and fish carcass identification. The next workshop will be held in winter, then spring, then summer. Topics of these workshops include macro-invertebrate sampling, summer water temperatures and chemical sampling, and stream habitat mapping.
One of the main objectives of the Monitoring Project is to familiarize residents with the quality of aquatic and terrestrial life in and around local streams. To get a picture of the health of your stream, different methods will be used to measure unique parameters. We will look at plant and animal life, water temperature and turbidity, dissolved oxygen, and water flow. By looking at these features of the watershed life, candidate areas for restoration and replanting will be discovered. We will keep track of what types of salmon spawn in our streams during the winter. In the summer, stream habitat will be surveyed, including tree canopy, bank stability, stream pools/riffles, and gravel sizes.
Photos by Carol Conners
Estuary at New Year Flood and at Spring
These two pictures demonstrate taking pictures from the same point of view at differnt seasons
The project will run until October of 2007, so there is plenty of time to get involved. Any and all citizens of the Eel River Watershed are invited to participate. Students from the Casterlin School in Alderpoint and the Round Valley School in Covelo will be part of it, your neighbor, your boss, your 7-year-old daughter too! Anyone and everyone can learn these basic tools to monitor the river. The methods are basic and no science background is necessary – we will teach you all that you need to know. Take this chance to get involved in the effort to save the river. We are gonna have fun doing it – so grab your rubber boots, rollup your shirtsleeves, and get ready to play in the creek while learning and gathering valuable data!
If you have any questions and are interested in the project please do not hesitate to contact Judy at the FOER office (923-2146) or Ruth Goodfield @ 923-5227!