Keeping streams healthy
Marathon and Clark County residents are doing their part to restore the health of local waterways by participating in the state Water Action Volunteers (WAV) program.
The statewide conservation program, which began in 1996 and has steadily grown since then, is a joint project between the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension and the Wisconsin DNR and includes over 50 local partners across Wisconsin. Using a network of volunteers, the WAV program aims to help preserve and restore the tens of thousands of miles of waterways in the state by collecting important data that can be used to monitor and evaluate the ongoing health of these waterways.
The WAV program has grown to include over 500 different volunteers and roughly 2,000 students across the state. While a vast majority of these volunteers and monitoring sites are in southern Wisconsin or west of Eau Claire, there are also a number of sites in Clark and Marathon counties.
“Currently we work with about 11 different volunteers that monitor eight different locations,” said Jared Mader, Marathon County’s Water Resources Technician from the Department of Conservation, Planning & Zoning.
Not only does the program provide valuable monitoring data, but it also gives the volunteers an opportunity to learn about and help preserve their local waterways. No prior experience is necessary and anyone, from adults to children 10 years or older with supervision, can become part of the program.
Volunteers are given free training and equipment and “adopt” a stream site to sample and collect data on. They will monitor the water temperature, dissolved oxygen levels, water clarity, streamflow, aquatic macroinvertebrates and note any invasive species discovered.
“After going through a training with us, we provide all of our volunteers with a large backpack of supplies, along with larger scientific instruments like nets and tubes that they get to keep over the course of the WAV season from May to October,” Mader said. “Our volunteers wear waders or hip boots to go into the stream they are assigned to collect data from once a month.”
Equipment used to collect data include thermometers, HACH kits, which are used to calculate dissolved oxygen, turbidity tubes for measuring clarity, tape measures and floats and a D-net for the macroinvertebrate survey. The volunteers then fill out the associated data sheet and submit it to Mader, the Marathon County coordinator.
Mader will then upload the data to the DNR’s SWIM database.
Collecting information on these metrics and putting them in a shared database helps build an overall picture of the health of these waterways. Factors like dissolved oxygen levels and temperature have effects on the wildlife living in these waterways, while monitoring invasive species can help with the tracking and limiting of these species. The accumulation of this data can then help note where issues may be arising and allow organizations to take corrective steps to improve conditions.
Information gathered over the years has also been used to help answer a variety of research questions, from the monitoring of crayfish and E. coli to the effects of road salt runoff into local streams.
“Not only are we able to collect valuable data to track our water quality improvement efforts, this program also provides a great way to engage with volunteers and provide outreach and education related to conservation and water quality,” Mader said.
Education is a huge part of the program, as getting people in the community involved and knowledgeable about the natural resources in their area is as important as the data itself. Building those connections, between the volunteers and both those in the program and nature, is part of the vision behind the WAV program.
Anyone can become part of the program and interested parties can contact local WAV Coordinator, Jared Mader at jared. mader@marathoncounty.gov or 715-2616027.
