Students determine Snoqualmie wetland has average health
May 26, 2010
By Laura Geggel
Just how healthy is the wetland behind Snoqualmie Elementary School?
Fifth-grade students set out to answer the question during an hourlong workshop May 18 with Mountains to Sound Greenway Educator Sally Kentch.
There were many factors to examine, and students broke into groups to scrutinize them. Many had ventured into the wetland for class outings — such as silent reading or outside lessons — but few had thought to look at the wetland from an environmental perspective.
“It’s cool to learn about the plants and how they work,” fifth-grader Noah Vaughn said.
Fifth-grade teachers said they hope the wetland workshop will make students more aware of the environment, especially since they are going on a three-day outdoor field trip to Camp Seabeck on the Kitsap Peninsula in June.
Teacher Danette Hruska said her students were lucky to be so close to a wetland, and they were learning how it connected with the Cedar River Watershed, and even to Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean.
“We’re the only elementary school in the district that has this amazing outdoor environment,” Hruska said.
In their classes, students had already learned that salmon prefer cold streams with gravelly bottoms. It helps if the streams have trees lining both sides of the bank to provide shade and prevent erosion, Kentch said. Having driftwood in the stream doesn’t hurt either, fifth-grader Rachel Odom added.
Jay Bang successfully catches a water insect with his net as his fifth-grade classmates, Marcus Johnson (left), Brenna Zender and Lauren Mather, try to stay out of the mud for their wetland lab. Photo by Laura Geggel
“When the water goes over things, it captures oxygen and brings it back into the stream,” which supplies oxygen for fish, she said.
Her group rated the stream at medium health, since it had a few pieces of woody debris but had silt — instead of gravel — on its bottom.
Another group checked for invasive plants. They didn’t have to look hard — they easily found blackberries, Scotch broom and large leafed avens, which look like buttercups.
Closer to the stream, a handful of students measured its temperature, acidity and the amount of phosphates and nitrates in its waters.
Kade McNamara announced the river was 16 degrees Celsius, a good sign, because colder water has more oxygen than warmer water. Fifth-grader Sophia Coleman added to the report, saying the stream had acidity between 6.5 and 8.5, a good neutral spot that wasn’t too acidic or basic on the pH scale.
Alex Oakley helped conclude the report by measuring the nitrates and phosphates with his group.
“Phosphates are nutrients. When a cow takes a dump in the water, it’s not good. But if a fish dies in the water, that can be good,” Oakley said, explaining how a river ecosystem needs nutrients, but not too much.
The health of the ecosystem affects what types of creatures live there.
In the wetland behind the school, students found a variety of water insects — like black flies and mayflies — but no fish.
Interestingly, environmentalists can determine the health of a wetland by looking at the types of insects that live there.
Fifth-grader Sarah Tedeschi said most of the water bugs her group found were from a group indicating the stream was of medium quality.
Some students were more intrigued with catching the insects with a small net.
“We found 30 bugs total,” fifth-grader Jay Bang reported.
Overall, students rated the wetland as having average health.
“It’s not completely polluted, but it’s not completely clean,” Tedeschi said, but the class acknowledged it had only gotten a snapshot of the wetland, and that it could change at any time.
The fifth grade continued with its project May 21, planting trees in Three Forks Park.
“I just like connecting with nature,” fifth-grader Aaron Thompson said.
Laura Geggel: 392-6434, ext. 221, or lgeggel@snovalleystar.com. Comment at www.snovalleystar.com.
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