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Wet Project Watershed Initiative
Poland Springs Water and Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve sponsored the Wet Project Watershed Initiative for fifth graders at Morse Pond Middle School (Falmouth, MA) on September 21st. WHFC volunteers Rebecca Deusser, Ellen Mecray, and Nancy Soderberg joined a large number of parental and business volunteers in helping the 400 energetic and eager students learn about their coastal environment and watershed. Each child was tasked to complete six activities selected from over a dozen to learn more about the water around them: where it comes from and where it goes, that they swim in it and boat upon it, and drink and flush it. The blossoming ecologists learned about the watershed in which their school is located using DOQ (Digital Orthophoto Quad) posters overlaid with water divides, groundwater contours and municipal wells. The Cape Cod Commission prepared the posters. The students also learned to perform several water-quality monitoring tests using salinometers, hydrometers with thermometers, and miniature secchi disks in colored water to measure the health of the surrounding ponds and bays. Surprisingly, many students were familiar with these standard water-quality tests (temperature, salinity, turbidity, pH) from exposure to family pool maintenance and "old ladies with secchi disks!" Despite nature's insistence on raining heavily, forcing the event inside the school building, the students cheerfully absorbed the message that we all impact our environment in a variety of ways, a message that will resurface in their science curriculum throughout the year.
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Author of Organic Geochemistry Novel Visits  |
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U. S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
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