I know that things have warmed up (even if it feels more like April out there) because its monitoring season. During the late spring, summer, and early fall, a lot of the work I do involves monitoring of some sort. Here's the rundown on the monitoring from this week:
Tuesday I went to Inner Little Harbor to collect a water sample for nutrient and chlorophyll analysis. I have been trying to do this on a weekly basis to supplement the data being collected with two automatic water quality loggers that have been deployed there by my CZM South Shore counterpart, Jason Burtner, and the Mass. Bays Monitoring Scientist, Christian Krahforst. The point of all this data collection is to understand Inner Little Harbor's water quality dynamics in relation to the management of the tide gate at Cat Dam. Hopefully this data will help inform management of the tide gate in a way that reduces eutrophication (excess nutrients and algal growth). My role is to collect the water sample and process it by filtration (using the Cohasset Center for Student Coastal Research lab) - the filter will be used for chlorophyll analysis and the filtrate (leftover liquid) for nutrient analysis.
On Wednesday I went out for some water testing on the North and South Rivers for our annual Riverwatch program. Although we are not training volunteers until June 30th (please join us!) I wanted to start collecting data, so I went out with our intern Adria. We also had a chance to do some additional testing of some stormwater catchbasins on the North River that may be contributing bacteria - we'll let you know if we find anything!
On Thursday I was joined by Jo Carey of Mass. Riverways for some habitat and water quality monitoring in the two impoundments on First Herring Brook - Old Oaken Bucket Pond and the Reservoir. This is the third year of monitoring to check whether the water quality in the impoundments is supportive for fish and other creatures as part of a larger First Herring Brook Restoration project. I can't say that it's a really tough time to have to kayak on the two water bodies, although we were getting bit by no-see-ums on Old Oaken Bucket, and I fell into the Reservoir getting out of my kayak (happens about half the time - I'm not very good at that.) One pleasant surprise from this sampling was seeing water flowing through the Reservoir fish ladder, which we hadn't seen during the previous two summers.
More monitoring news as the summer progresses!
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