River Monitoring: Transition from Summer to Fall

As summer cools off, the river monitoring program stays active with a passionate group of river monitors. We have continued throughout the summer to test water quality once a month, and even twice a month at our “Safe to Swim” sites where samples are analyzed for bacteria contamination.  So far, results show that bacteria levels are below the State of California threshold limits and no red flags have been detected.  We witnessed an increase in algae over the summer months due to low flows and very warm temperatures. This should begin to change as we see cooler days and precipitation in the future.

The river monitoring team has provided a staggering 851 hours of volunteer time! We are expected to break the 1000 hour mark next monitoring day which will be Saturday October 13th.  We have been covering approximately 32 sites each month with a total of 35 to 45 people involved each monitoring day.  Fortunately, there has been few invasive noxious weeds spotted. We are pleased to pass along that yellow-legged foothill frogs have been spotted on both the South fork and Middle fork of the Yuba River.

Over the next month the temperature loggers will be removed from all 15 sites and analyzed to better understand hourly temperature fluctuation throughout the Yuba watershed. There are two more river monitoring days remaining in the 2012 season. Data and results from this year will be shared with regulatory authorities, watershed cooperators and the public at SYRCL’s Yuba River Watershed Information System (Yuba Shed). Please contact Eric Rubenstahl, the River Monitoring Coordinator, if you would like to join this exciting and fun group of citizen scientists.