Adopt-A-Stream

Road and forest management and restoration could have important effects on watershed function, in-stream habitat conditions and water quality. All are important objectives for Southwest Crown Collaborative (SWCC) Forest Landscape Restoration actions, but the effects of these actions are complex, uncertain and controversial.

Past monitoring has been limited and often inconsistent. Our efforts monitoring Morrell Creek and the Clearwater Valley lakes have shown that students and volunteers can collect high quality information at limited cost with the additional benefit of engaging and educating our community in natural resource issues. Building on that with funding through the SWCC we initiated a one-year project in 2013 to monitor 22 new streams in and around the Clearwater basin with help from local volunteers. In 2016, with funding from the Southwestern Crown Collaborative (see Southwestern Crown Collaborative - Stream Monitoring: 2021 ) and the U.S. Forest Service, we expanded the program to streams throughout the Clearwater Basin. Our broad goals were two fold: to gather important new information on the condition of our streams and their responses to watershed management and to engage citizen volunteers in efforts to learn and conserve their natural resources.

View this Southwestern Crown Collaboration video presentation, Stream Monitoring in the Clearwater and Blackfoot Watersheds Student and Citizen Science with the SWCC, which describes the collection of stream monitoring data including flow, turbidity, and nutrients from tributaries of the Clearwater and Blackfoot rivers in western Montana.

Past information about the program includes, “It's Time to Get In the Streams – Adopt-A-Stream” a Seeley Swan Pathfinder article from the February 22, 2018.

For current information, contact Jon Haufler ( jon@crcmt.org).

2018 Stream Monitoring (13 images)