2012 Snapshot Day – Getting a Complete Water Quality Picture of Reno/Tahoe
Reno Tahoe residents, want to roll up your sleeves and do something about water quality in our region? The 8th annual Water Quality Snapshot Day needs volunteers Saturday, May 10.
This is a cause near and dear to our hearts here at Western Environmental Testing Laboratory – WETLAB, and we’ve worked as team leaders since the beginning. But you don’t need to be a water quality expert – you just need to care about our regions rivers, lakes and streams.
The idea is to get volunteers from all around Lake Tahoe and along the Truckee River to Pyramid Lake to take water quality samples in order to create a holistic picture of our region’s water. The event not only provides valuable data to area researchers on a large scale, but it’s also a great excuse to get outside and enjoy our region’s beautiful waterways!
All you have to do is meet for a brief orientation at 8:30 a.m. Saturday, May 10. Reno area volunteers will meet at Bartley Ranch Regional Park, 6000 Bartley Ranch Road.
Truckee area volunteers will meet at the Sagehen Field Station, about 10 miles north of Truckee on Highway 89 North.
North Lake Tahoe volunteers will meet at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, and South Lake Tahoe volunteers will meet at the Lake Tahoe Community College cafeteria.
Volunteers will be lead by trained group leaders, fanning out across our watershed to various locations on a variety of streams and tributaries, testing for dissolved oxygen, conductivity, pH and temperature, also collecting water samples for laboratory analysis of nutrients, sediments and bacteria. All this data will give important insights into the health of our waterways. You’ll also learn interesting information about our watershed from your team leader.
To sign up as a volunteer, call Mary Kay Riedl at 775-687-9454 for Reno area, Beth Christman at 530-550-8760 for the Truckee area or Susie Kocher at 530-542-2571 for Lake Tahoe.
Map showing the Truckee River drainage basin. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Finally SNOW!
Over a century ago, our region was characterized by booms and busts in gold and silver. Now it’s water – last year hit the motherload with snowfall in the Sierra for the record books. This year – so far – has been a bust, with the second driest December on record in the northern Sierra – the driest for Reno in 130 years.
While Wetlab’s work is water quality, as a part of the region we’re all watching water quantity too. Reno and Sparks depend on the snowfall in the Sierra slowly melting in the spring and coming down the Truckee River. So no snow has some people concerned.
The first snow survey by the California Department of Water Resources happened just after the first of the year in the Sierra.
The results weren’t surprising to anybody looking up at the bare mountains above Northern Nevada: 21 percent of normal water content for Jan. 3, and 8 percent of where we want to be by April 1, according to the Tahoe Daily Tribune.
The National Integrated Drought Information System rates much of Northern Nevada between “abnormally dry” and “Drought – moderate” and the Northern Sierra to the west in “Drought – Severe” as of January 10.
The good news, according to the Truckee Meadows Water Authority, is there is still plenty of water for its customers, according to a report on KOLO News.
“We know we can withstand at least a nine year drought,” Senior Hydrologist Bill Hauck said to KOLO.
Last year’s huge snowfall helped, leaving enough water stored in Lake Tahoe and area reservoirs for the community, he said.
The dry spell could still effect Northern Nevada residents in the costs of food as scarce water has affected agriculture, according to the report.
And the dry weather put firefighters on high alert during a red flag warning on Sunday when the wind picked up, according to the National Weather Service.
The culprit has been a large high pressure front blocking storms and sending them both to the north and the south since around Thanksgiving.
But things have started to change this week, with a the high pressure front being displaced north and a cold front moving into our region, according to the Weather Service.
“A short period of light to moderate rain should spill into the most populated areas by late Thursday afternoon,” according to the forecast discussion. “The strongest storm is still on track to affect the region Friday thru (sic) Saturday. Confidence is quite high for a period of heavy precipitation in eastern California and far western Nevada as subtropical moisture plume with 1.5 inches PW values points straight at the Sierra.”
Let’s hope the trend continues as the winter progresses, and the winter turns into another strong one!
For those of you are aren’t familiar with Snapshot Day, it is a citizen-based water quality monitoring event of the Lake Tahoe and Truckee River Watersheds. Citizen monitoring teams, led by water resource professionals, and composed of community volunteers and students, field-test streams throughout the watershed for dissolved oxygen (DO), conductivity (EC), pH, and temperature. The also collect discrete water samples that are then taken to a laboratory for the analysis of nutrients, sediments and bacteria. Teams will also conduct visual habitat assessments of the sites. Team leaders will help educate the volunteers and students by sharing interesting watershed facts and provide information about how you can improve and protect your watershed.
This is a great opportunity to learn about your local watershed and get more involved in a great locally driven environmental event. Also, the data collected on this day helps provide a “snapshot” of water quality and stream conditions all throughout the watershed.
For more information about Snapshot day, or if you would like to participate next year (either as a team leader or a volunteer), email Mary Kay Reidl at mriedl@ndep.nv.gov.
This year, our Client Services Representative, Brian Wadsworth, participated in Snapshot day!
You can also contact Brian at brianw@wetlaboratory.com for more information!
>
