Pond study and water quality - Sept 24

What a great turnout we had on Saturday. The weather was beautiful and perfect for gathering creatures from the pond!

It was nice to meet all the new members that have joined the Young Naturalists club this year and welcome back some returning members.
During the first part of our meeting we shared the following sightings: Piping Plover, Pileated Woodpecker, coyote, deer, snake, seal and gopher.

We're going to try something new this year. Each time we meet, we'll take a photo of the same spot at the pond so that we can see how that spot changes from season to season. Each young naturalist will also have a journal where they can write down the things they did and saw during each meeting!

While we were at the pond, we collected water to measure the water quality. The results were:
Air temperature: 20 degrees, Turbidity: 40 jtu, Water temperature: 18 degrees, Dissolved Oxygen: 4, pH: 7. Because of some problems with the sampling, the results were not submitted to the water monitoring website. If you would like to read more about water sampling, here is a link to the website: http://www.worldwatermonitoringday.org/

It looked like everyone had fun collecting creatures at the pond:

List of creatures collected:

crayfish

leopard frog

water scorpion

giant water bug

tadpole

scud

dragon fly nymph

damsel fly nymph

scavenger beetle

water boatman

water mite

fisher spider

backswimmer

water strider

stickleback

caddis fly nymph

See you in October!

Kelly