Award-winning Lower Fox River Water Monitoring Symposium is Wednesday, April 18th
The Lower Fox River Water Monitoring Program (LFRWMP) is an award winning program made up of area high school teachers and their students, and community citizen scientists that monitor seven environmentally impaired streams in the Fox River watershed for water quality and ecological health. Students take on the role of scientists and explore local streams and waterways, in partnership with UW-Green Bay and the scientific community.
The water monitoring data provides a measure of pollution that flows to the Fox River and Bay of Green Bay. This runoff pollution is the type of pollution that contributes to the much publicized “dead zone” in the Bay of Green Bay. So beyond the innovative educational benefits the program provides for local students, it also provides the community with crucial data about water quality that can be used to assess long-term trends and evaluate restoration efforts.
Each year, the monitoring season culminates in a one-day Watershed Symposium held at UW-Green Bay where student-teacher teams, program partners, agency representatives, and community members meet to exchange ideas and share research findings with panel discussions, posters and presentations. Student teams can compare data from their streams with that of the other stream teams, in order to assess and improve stream health. The symposium provides high school students with a rare opportunity to interact with researchers in water quality fields.
This year’s Keynote talk features several UWGB undergraduate and graduate students, including Colton Tanner, Vanessa Brotske, Maria Otto, Tara Hohman and Jonathan Schubbe who will talk about their experiences doing independent research in college and describe how it expanded their knowledge and helped them to develop important skills they are using at work.
Students from five high schools will present talks on their streams and how water quality has changed over 10+ years of monitoring. Schools presenting at the symposium are Green Bay Southwest led by Lynn Terrien, Oshkosh Lourdes led by Barb Reed, Appleton East and North led by Ryan Marx and Sheryl Stidham-Gebert, Weyauwega-Fremont led by Lynn Ponto, and Kaukauna led by Stefanie Stainton.
LFRWMP was awarded a Watershed Hero 2018 Impact Award by the Fox Wolf Watershed Alliance for 15 years of watershed monitoring and education accomplishments by the school teams, UWGB and partners. During the opening remarks participating schools will be presented with Watershed Hero award certificates.
The morning session (8:30 to 11a.m.) is open to the public.
Schedule:
8:30: Opening remarks and presentation of Watershed Hero 2018 Impact Award Certificates
8:45: Keynote Speakers
9:45: Break
10:00: High School Student Presentations
11:00: Morning Session ends
