Funded by a grant from the Wildlife Foundation of Florida, the Florida Springs Institute is coordinating a group of volunteers who are doing scientific baseline sampling to assess conditions of ecological health along the Lower Ichetucknee River (outside the state park) from July 20-31, 2015. Follow the activities of the monitoring team here in what we hope will be daily entries to this blog post!
From Heather Culp on July 19, 2015
We documented turtles today on the Ich. We saw several different species, including Florida cooter, yellow-bellied sliders, musk turtles, and hybrid red-eared sliders. We took many photos on the field camera, which I will send your way once we upload them. Tomorrow, we plan to do water quality monitoring, including sonde deployment (measuring salinity, pH, and dissolved oxygen), secchi readings (measuring clarity), and vegetation surveys. I’ll keep you posted as much as possible as we go!
From Jill Lingard on July 20, 2015
Here’s what Heather and I cooked up on the Ich today during the water monitoring session. Our future as poets does not look promising.
We’re on the river
Light meter at the surface
Arm is getting tired
Photo by Jill Lingard
Here’s my parting Haiku for today….
Last station metering
Folks done searching for gate key
They all blame Heather
(P.S. Key was found.)
From Bob Knight on July 21, 2015
Some of the people who are helping with the baseline study are pictured here. Click on each photo for a bigger view. All photos by Bob Knight.
From Heather Culp on July 22, 2015
Today we split into several teams to measure discharge, export particulates, and collect snails, mussels, and insects. We also conducted human use counts at Hodor Park and Point Park. Our human use counts showed a moderate use of the river during a weekday for various activities, including swimming, tubing, snorkeling, paddle boarding, and sunbathing.
From Heather Culp on July 25, 2015
A team went out on the river to measure light today. We also conducted a second human use count to measure weekend activity at Hodor Park and Point Park. We observed heavy activity at both parks. At Hodor Park, for example, families gathered for three separate birthday parties, while others played volleyball and tied their tubes together for a float down the river.
From Heather Culp on July 27, 2015
Today, we deployed screened traps to collect insects along the river. Those traps will be collected on Friday, July 31, and the insects inside the traps will be examined. We also recorded vegetation across the river at each of our 15 stations and measured depths. Devices were deployed to measure the canopy cover of nearby trees. During our field research, we encountered many creatures of the Ichetucknee, including a family of otters and a rat snake. We also teamed up with a nearby resident to rescue a severely injured ibis.
From Heather’s Facebook page: Today was quite the adventure on the Ichetucknee! We saw a rat snake resting on a tree branch and met a group of otters! We also rescued a severely injured ibis (a resident on the river took it in for us and sought care for it). Then I got home and found a snail in one of my water shoes. I put him in water and named him Mort!
From Heather Culp on July 30, 2015
I have not been out in the field on any other days and tomorrow is our last day of field research. Although I will not be there, the FSI team will be out with volunteers collecting light measurements, retrieving the sondes that we deployed on the first day of the assessment, and retrieving insect traps and HOBOs used to measure tree canopy cover over the river.
Note: Results of the baseline monitoring activities will appear in a future blog post.