40. Participate in River Watch and maintain a stream

Back in April, Jason and I spent a rainy Saturday sitting in a Riverwatch class. The mission of Hoosier Riverwatch is to involve the citizens of Indiana in becoming active stewards of Indiana's water resources through watershed education, water monitoring and clean up activities. (Taken from the Hoosier Riverwatch Training Manual)

Basically they teach you how to do a habitat assessment of a stream or brook and how to do chemical and biological monitoring of that same stream. Looking at these three things can help give you a picture of the stream's health and the larger body of water that the stream feeds into. I'm pretty into the habitat assessment (the easiest for a layman like myself) and Jason's pretty into the chemical and biological monitoring. Especially the biological part...you know...looking at all the bugs in the water!

So we took our course and our cards came this week...now all we have to do is find a nearby stream and go monitor it. We're supposed to do this 2-4 times a year at the same spot and we can administer one test, two tests or all three tests. I'll keep you updated on our progress. For now, I'll go ahead and mark it off the bucket list because at least we took the class!