Activities Waterbody Sampling

The Stream Team Program provides an outline to help volunteer stream teams monitor their adopted stream. This outline consists of four main components: 1) Inventory Manual, 2) Inventory Form, 3) Stream Surveying, and 4) Stream Team Data Base. These components provide stream teams with the ability to document their adopted streams condition, identify potentially detrimental activities in the watershed, and document these changes in the statewide Stream Team Water Quality Data Base.

So you are interested in starting a Stream Team to monitor a local waterbody and you are probably asking yourself, “How do I get started?” First things first, you should start by taking a close look at your adopted stream. The Stream Team Inventory Manual will help you get acquainted with the background information needed to understand what features define a healthy stream system and the practices that can lead to detrimental effects to your stream. In this manual you will find brief descriptions, with reference pictures, of the 7 different components used to identify healthy and impaired streams systems. These components include: the watershed, riparian zones, streambanks, stream channels, fish and wildlife habitat, scenic features, and water quality.

Once you are acquainted with the Inventory Manual, it is time to qualitatively define these components using the Inventory Form. First, each component is described in detail and ranked based on your judgment of how your stream compares with the examples outlined in the Inventory Manual. Then common stream issues that may be impacting your stream are ranked based on severity of the problem.

After obtaining a quantitative view of your stream and its watershed, it is time to take a closer look at the stream itself. Stream Surveying outlines the important physical, chemical, and biological variables needed to quantitatively assess your adopted stream. These measurements consist of: depth, substrate, in-stream cover, riparian cover, velocity, macro-invertebrates, dissolved oxygen, water hardness, nitrates, phosphorus, alkalinity, pH, and turbidity.

Finally, this information needs to be entered into the Stream Team Data Base. Team leaders can input this data directly into this website and a copy of the data should be mailed to AGFC Stream Team for quality control and data storage. You can also use this website to review Stream Team data from other teams for comparison.