Schools
West Lutheran H.S. Students Conduct Stream Study
The West Lutheran Chemistry class collected stream samples and analyzed them in the classroom.
On Friday, Oct. 12, the West Lutheran High School Chemistry in Community class met the Hennepin County Conservation District field expert for this program, Katie Farber, at the Crow River and spent the afternoon netting larva from the bottom of the river along with chemical testing.
This is the 17th year that students of West Lutheran have been a part of the River Watch Project of the HCCD. Their role in River Watch is to monitor the Crow River as it passes through Rockford.
Each spring and fall the students complete a site analysis and collect macroinvertibrates (bugs) samples from the river bottom in three riffle locations. Back in the classroom, 100-300 of the individual organisms are identified down to the family.
By gauging the pollution tolerance of the identified bugs and looking at the site analysis, the quality of the stream is measured and compared to previous years. The fieldwork takes up most of an afternoon and four forty-minute class periods are spent on the lab work.
