Charles River Watershed Association: Water Chestnut Mapping

Friday, June 15, 2012

Water Chestnut Mapping

These last two weeks have been especially busy.

Last Friday, Intern Evan and I attended Gardner Pilot Academy’s Friendship Feast, a gathering of students, teachers, parents, and siblings to celebrate their school, their community, and the end of the school year. We presented our Watershed in a Box. While I do not want to spoil the surprise of learning about the Watershed in a Box in real life, I will say that we had a lot of fun (and made many messes) teaching the Gardner community about watersheds.

On Wednesday, Ingrid, Bruce and I completed our weekly water testing in the pouring rain. I like to think that we had a fun time even though we were cold and wet.

Yesterday (Thursday), I mapped water chestnuts with Don, a CRWA volunteer, from a canoe, using an iPad app called MeasureMap (For more information about the app, click here). In some cases, we had to paddle through dense water chestnut patches to reach the proper spot. While the paddling on the open water was slightly taxing, paddling through the water chestnuts was one of the most difficult physical feats I have ever undertaken. A few times, we were paddling hard and not moving. It was interesting to see how widespread and dense the patches were. (For those of you who do not know, water chestnuts grow in dense mats, blocking sunlight from reaching the native vegetation below. For more information about water chestnuts click here).

Stuck in water chestnuts

Even though the canoeing was difficult, I enjoyed spending the morning in the field, especially since it was a beautiful sunny day. We saw a lot of wildlife, including a few fish, a lot of birds, such as a blue heron and a family of geese, many insects, especially lady bugs, and a turtle.

Lady bugs on a yellow water lily

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Welcome to the Charles River Watershed Association's Intern Blog

CRWA's mission is to use science, advocacy and the law to protect, preserve and enhance the Charles River and its watershed.

One of the country's oldest watershed organizations, Charles River Watershed Association (CRWA) was formed in 1965 in response to public concern about the declining condition of the Charles. Since its earliest days of advocacy, CRWA has figured prominently in major clean-up and watershed protection efforts, working with government officials and citizen groups from 35 Massachusetts watershed towns from Hopkinton to Boston. Initiatives over the last four decades have dramatically improved the quality of water in the watershed and fundamentally changed approaches to water resource management.

While CRWA’s mission focuses on the Charles River, the implications and applicability of our science-based work go far beyond the watershed’s boundaries. Much of CRWA’s work is cutting edge and therein lies our unique strength and effectiveness: we use our scientific knowledge of the Charles to develop innovative, workable solutions to watershed problems. This knowledge allows CRWA not only to advocate persuasively for outcomes, but also to partner with government agencies and other environmental groups to protect the natural environment and to promote sustainable ecosystem policies and practices.