Next Meeting Announcement
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When:
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April 9th, 2014, 7:00 pm |
| Where: |
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Bayland Community Center, 6400 Bissonnet, Houston, Texas
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| Directions: |
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North side of Bissonnet, first driveway just west of Hillcroft.
First building entrance on the left past the football field.
See the maps below for more details.
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| Speaker: |
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Travis Tidwell |
| Description: |
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 Travis Tidwell from Texas State University will talk about the "Texas Stream Team" and ask for volunteer water quality monitors, explain the equipment and talk about surface water quality in Texas.
Texas Stream Team is a network of citizen scientists and partner organizations across the state that are trained to collect water quality data on rivers, lakes, streams, bayous, and estuaries. After training, citizen scientists are assigned a site where they monitor the water quality monthly and submit the data to Texas Stream Team headquarters at Texas State University. The data is used to help provide local and state water managers with additional water quality data to help them in their decision making.
Texas Stream Team has recently expanded to include the TST Paddlers Program. The idea behind TST Paddlers is to encourage paddlers to become involved in citizen science. Paddlers are consistently out on the water and are very familiar with their local rivers, lakes, and bayous. Texas Stream Team's goal is to work with paddling groups to establish paddling routes with designated monitoring sites where paddlers can go out and monitor monthly. The water quality monitoring is designed to be simple, quick, and can be done in 15 minutes when working together as a group.
An on-the-water training will need to eventually be scheduled with the group where paddlers will learn how to sample for water quality, why it's important, how to record the data, and how to calibrate and maintain the equipment. This will be discussed further at the meeting.
Bio:
Travis joined the Texas Stream Team in June of 2012. Before taking the position as the Monitoring Program Coordinator, Travis worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on the Natural Resource Damage Assessment of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Prior to that, Travis worked for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department at the AE Wood Fish Hatchery in San Marcos, Texas, and he also worked for the National Marine Fisheries Service as a Fishery Observer in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea. Travis received a B.S. degree in Biology from the University of Texas at Austin and a M.S. degree in Marine Science from the University of Texas Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas where he studied the early life history of billfish. Travis lives in New Braunfels where he spends as much of his free time as he can fly fishing and kayaking on the Guadalupe River.
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Be sure to set this date aside on your calendar, then come out and support your club.
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| Maps: |
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Bayland Community Center: (Click for more details)
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Location of meeting room: (Click to enlarge) |
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