Mapping Our Hydrology Study Site

Yesterday I took a team of four from Project Citizen to map the site that my fourth graders and Project Citizen students are going to use for a hydrology study site. We will be using this site to monitor the health of the Tuolumne River. We chose this particular site because it gives the students easy access to the river.

We started our expedition by loading up my car with all our equipment. We had to do this after school so we weren't sure if we would have enough time to run our water tests. We took all our equipment just in case. After parking at the trailhead we took a nice walk along the riverbank to our site. Luckily we were able to find a 50 meter section that gave us access.

Our task was to measure and map our hydrology study site. After a little stone skipping practice we got down to work. While working we treated to visions of egrets, canadian geese, red tailed hawks, and mallards flying overhead. We even heard woodpeckers at work in the surrounding riparian habitat.

First, we measure a 10 meter distance from the riverbank to make sure we had the minimum distance. Then we set about laying down a transect line 50 meters long. We were so busy we didn't have much time to take photos except for the site photographs using the cardinal directions.

Next, we all took our turn at getting the GPS reading for the site. It was interesting to see how much variation there was with the elevation. Then each team member took site pictures. Just when we were getting ready to map Mr. Boothby arrived, it took us a little time to get a system together, but once we did the mapping went quite smoothly.