Dr. Orth,
I've recently become very interested in Streams, Fish and Aquatic life, in general. I teach science at the middle school level and wondered if the information in this class would be interesting to my students. Last school year, most of my students agreed to give me their email addresses so that I could keep them "up to date" on current science events over the school year and into the summer of 2008. When I got the idea to attend this class, I decided to take a poll among my students in the class of 2013. (Yes! That is their High School Graduation Year!) This "poll" addressed their knowledge of, and their interest in streams, fish and how to manage/reclaim and reconstruct riparian ecology. Their interest was much greater than I ever imagined.
I had thought that a few boys would be interested because of fishing, but to my great delight, those showing an interest were both male and female, with nearly equal numbers of each responding!!!
So, in the interest of "higher education" for middle school students, I am taking this class to give them, and myself a better understanding of what might be involved in stream habitat management. I plan to use this knowledge to construct a unit on Stream Habitat Management for the Middle School Level with a focus on careers involved.
My area of expertise is in Biology, not Ecology or Ichthyology. Therefore, I am surely at a disadvantage. However, I am looking forward to learning new information that I may use to enlighten my students, many who are interested in careers as wildlife biologists, ecological engineers, university professors or prize winning fishermen.
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I'm a new student here in Fisheries and Wildlife Studies, working with Paul Angermeier on the variegate darter in Virginia. I have a MS in Ecology, with a focus on aquatic ecology and stream fishes. Much of my previous work focused on the impacts of various land uses to stream fish assemblages, so I have seen and studied many impacted aquatic systems. Stream restoration seems to have become quite a hot topic for many groups, from non-profit organizations to university researchers to the federal government. I hope to increase my understanding of the current status and practices of stream restoration and how it fits into watershed conservation and management overall. One topic I'm particularly interested in is dam removal, how it differs across stream sizes, what the short- and long-term impacts are, how fishes are impacted, and the cost-benefit analyses that folks do before embarking on removing dams.
This is my second semester at VT, and I am working with Emmanuel Frimpong to explore source-sink features among urban and non-urban habitats for stream fishes. I got my B. S. from Arkansas Tech in Fisheries and Wildlife Biology last December. I spent about a year and a half working on a paddlefish telemetry project, and the next 3 doing zebra mussel research. Although most of my opportunities presented themselves in large systems, my passion remained in the headwaters; and the Ozarks were a good place for them to manifest themselves. Although I have little formal training in stream habitat management, the concept has always interested me. Particularly, I have always been interested in the idea that “restoring” or “improving” streams means many different things to many different people. It seems that many homegrown restoration projects are done with the best of intentions, but often fly in the face of what we ecologists deem appropriate. Examples include building earthen dams to hold trout in deforested streams, stocking Gambusia to control mosquitoes in summer pools, and my personal favorite-- putting brown trout into streams because they “clean the water up, don’t they?” (something a landowner actually told us while sampling this summer). I am also willing to entertain the thought that we ecologists could have it wrong, and perhaps other viewpoints could have a better grasp on how restored streams should function. Aside from learning field techniques for stream restoration, I would particularly like to learn how to make stream restoration a priority among communities, and how to convince citizens of the importance of water resources conservation.
I’m from the corner of Minnesota with more rivers than lakes. I have always been intrigued by flowing water and the animals that inhabit this foreign world. That and few summer research experiences as an undergrad at Luther College (Decorah, IA) got me into studying mussels. I've been working with freshwater mussels in the upper Tennessee system since I started my masters at VT in 2002. My MS work was on mussel habitat use. I wish I had had this class before starting and completing that project, but not having that background forced me to explore the literature on my own. I sifted through the good, the bad, and the ugly to build my understanding of how streams work and why mussels might occur in some parts and not others. I'm in this class to see how my ideas match up to yours. I have a solid understanding of some concepts in stream ecology and geomorphology, a vague idea of other concepts, and probably profound misunderstandings of others. And to add to that, using a Donald Rumsfeld quote, there are many "unknown unknowns" I hope to tackle this semester. To be more specific, I have had a class in fluvial geomorphology and read much on this subject. I have a basic understanding of channel hydraulics, instream habitat use analysis, impoundment and tailwater management, and the use of biological indicators. I have a limited understanding of how to do stream restoration and really have not bought into the idea of aggressive stream restoration or enhancement. I have had a few experiences participating in working groups to address river management, but I need to learn how to be a more effective participant in river management.
I will add a little more about my previous experience, both in and out of the classroom. My have had one class in fluvial geomorphology, which was lecture driven- for example, we learned how determine bankfull width by watching a video published in the mid-80s. The most interesting thing about the video was that it featured Luna Leopold, son of the famous Aldo Leopold. Other than that it was based on western streams and we obviously got no field experience. So, while I have some knowledge of geomorphology terminology and theory, much of my practical experience comes from pebble counts and other small-scale geomorphic data collected for myself and other students. I've had more experience, both in and out of the classroom in biological monitoring; fish samples, mussel surveys, macroinvertebrate sampling, etc. I've taken classes in aquatic ecology, aquatic maroinvertebrates, ichthyology and more. My experience with river restoration is limited to trash clean-ups and tree plantings; I have done some before/after fish sampling in areas with cattle exclusion fencing, but I was not involved in the planning or installation of the fencing. It was a project funded by the NRCS in Georgia. I look forward to learning more about the practice of river restoration as it is done currently and to working with a group of people with as much diversity of backgrounds and experiences as our class seems to hold. I think both the science and the non-science part of this class will have much to offer as I gather a more complete understanding of the demands of planning and implementing restoration projects. Like Brett, I have been skeptical of the money and energy spent on aggressive stream restoration and Iook forward to learning both current practices and ideas of how stream restoration can and should be improved in the future. We saw from Larry Mohn’s presentation that the how-to of stream restoration and improvement has changed through the years, and I look forward to learning the future of preservation and restoration of our streams and rivers.
I came to VT from a small suburban town in central Virginia but I grew up in Chesterfield County. Other than a small creek about a mile from my house there, I had little exposure to moving water growing up. Most of my aquatic experiences came from vacationing on the Chesapeake Bay during the summers. During these trips I would crab from piers in Reedville, VA and occasionally go fishing where the Potomac would flow into the bay. I did this less and less as I went through high school and became preoccupied with other activities. While an undergrad, I volunteered in labs that mainly focused on plant/insect interactions. I suppose this was enjoyable work, but I definitely knew that this was not the path I wanted to follow. After graduating with a BS from the biology dept, I applied for and obtained a summer technician position through the mussel lab. I spent the summer collecting fish, sampling mussel populations in the Clinch River, and designing/building recirculation aquaculture systems. Following the summer, I was lucky enough to be offered a full-time staff position in the lab. I held this position until last December when I started a master’s project through the lab studying the remaining population of an endangered mussel in the Powell River. I have never had any formal training regarding stream management. In fact, I’ve had very little fisheries experience because I came into the department with a biology degree. So, what I do know is a direct result of have things explained to me while in the field, attending lectures in the dept, and the few courses I have completed within the department. My lack of knowledge on the subject is the main reason I am taking the course because I know as I move forward in the fisheries realm it will become a major topic of discussion.
Hello, this is The Pilgrim here to give a brief intro about himself. I completed my undergraduate studies at the KN University of Science and Technology back in Ghana, specializing in Fisheries and Watershed Management, in 2007. At that level, I took courses like Watershed Management, Fisheries Management, Wetland Conservation and Management, Freshwater Ecology and Watershed Hydrology. My undergraduate project was on "Association between Wetland Disturbances and Biological Attributes of some Plants". I really hope this background will be of some help in this Stream Habitat Management Class. I spent the last year coordinating the baseline survey for the 'Agroforestry Practices for Enhancing Resource-poor Livelihoods (APERL) project, which is a colloboration between Guelph University (Canada) and my alma mater (KNUST), for selected communities in Ghana.
So what am I doing thousands of miles away from my twenty-something-million-strong West African country? Its simple, really. I consider myself on a sort of knowledge pilgrimage at Virginia Tech. I am currently working with Dr Emmanuel Frimpong on "Characterization of aquaculture effluents and biological and physicochemical assessment of receiving waters in Ghana".
From this class, I hope to learn modern restoration techniques. That is, what goes into stream habitat management on the ground here in the US. I also hope to learn how pollution or water quality degradation, is prevented using manipulation of watershed or catchment factors. Last, but not the least, I am really interested in the condition of stream biota as a result of anthropogenic factors, which include management interventions.
This is my second year (third semester here at Virginia Tech as a graduate student) I'm pursuing my masters degree in Environmental Science and Engineering. I received my undergraduate degree in Environmental Science from Ferrum College in Franklin County, Virginia where I also played four years of baseball. Spending time at Ferrum made me appreciate nature more, mainly because there was nothing to do except play ball, play guitar, and go fishing and I didn’t mind at all. Towards the end of my time at Ferrum, I developed more of an appreciation for aquatic systems in particular. Coming to Virginia Tech was a bit of a shocker, since Ferrum had just over a thousand students and no engineering what-so-ever. The adjustment was difficult, but I’m still here today, and I’m still truckin’. I’m looking forward to a great semester and finishing school. When school is finally over, I’m not sure what I will do. Right now my main aspiration is to have a job that allows me to work outside a lot.
My experience with stream habitat management is limited. Last semester I took freshwater ecology and aquatic entomology, which were both Biology courses. Not much about management or reclamation was discussed, but I did pick up some ideas from my undergraduate work that may come in handy this semester. Hopefully I can learn as much as possible about stream habitat management, as well as some real world hands-on experience, since I certainly could see my career path going in this direction.
I have just begun my master’s work here at Virginia Tech studying the impacts of land use, and more specifically, urbanization on interspecific interactions in the New River drainage. More specifically, I want to understand how land use affects such things as bluehead chub nest association and predator-prey relationships in these streams. I arrived at this point through a lifelong fascination with streams. I have been an avid fisherman since a very early age and for as long as I can remember I have been intrigued by what goes on under the water. When you look at a terrestrial environment, you can see what is there. When you look into a body of water, you just can not. It is almost like having an alien world just under us. This interest in the aquatic world has kept me coming back to any water I can find whether that is the stream behind my best friend’s house or the New River here in Virginia. I grew up in a small town in the hilly southern tip of Ohio that is not too unlike southwest Virginia. The landscape around my town is almost completely forested and the streams are generally healthy and “natural” in their appearance. I became interested in the landscape aspect of streams when I went north to Ohio State for my undergraduate degree. While I was there, I worked in a stream ecology lab that had a number of great projects going on at the landscape level. For the two plus years that I worked in this lab, I traveled all over the state of Ohio and it was the first opportunity I had to really experience degradation in streams. From downtown Columbus (a city of around 1 million people) to Amish farms, I think I saw just about every alteration man can make to a stream. I also had the opportunity to see how stream biota, from protozoa to macroinvertebrates to fish, responded to these impairments. To answer the what I know question, I know that man has a huge impact on streams and life in streams. I feel that I have a good grasp on the types of habitats that different organisms need for their survival, and I also have a decent understanding of how anthropogenic disturbances impact these habitats. I also realize that restoration projects are expensive and too often not monitored properly. What I want to learn from this class are some different ways to improve stream habitat where streams have been damaged and how we can effectively quantify and monitor the effects of these improvements. My master’s work as well as some of my current course work should help me continue my understanding of stream structure and function and how human activity influences this. What I really want from this course is to gain the ability to utilize this knowledge to make sound management decisions.
My name is M. Lee Henebry and I’m a first year Masters Degree student in the lab group of Dr. Emmanuel Frimpong. I’m 22, from Roanoke, Virginia, and did my undergraduate degree in Biology at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia under Dr. Robert E. Jenkins. My research as an undergraduate focused on life history aspects of Catostomids, including fecundity (Carolina Redhorse, Sicklefin Redhorse, and Harelip Sucker), gonadal cycles (Sicklefin Redhorse and Bigeye Jumprock), food habits (Carolina Redhorse), and age and growth (Bigeye Jumprock). While at Virginia Tech, I will be examining feeding behaviors of several New River fish species of different trophic types in varying landscape degradation situations. I will also work on biological trait associations with ecological traits.
In my undergraduate education, I picked up a substantial amount of knowledge on aquatic systems in classes such as aquatic ecology, vertebrate biology, general ecology, as well as research and other classes with Dr. Jenkins. I know about aquatic habitats (and microhabitats), stream flow, stream bed composition and substrates, pools, riffles, runs, riparian characters and influence, and some current problems facing stream management, ect. I also took several classes in cell, molecular, and developmental biology. While my classes covered a good portion of the biology of fishes and their habitats, I have never had a formal course in a management discipline before.
In Stream Habitat Management, I hope to learn many different facets of how to fix, maintain, and preserve streams from human interactions. I not only want to learn how management works internally and externally, but I want to be able to apply what I have learned. I find the policy part of Stream Habitat Management very interesting so far, and I hope there is more elaboration on this subject. I basically know what general human interactions cause stream degradation, but I want to learn the specifics of these processes, and if and how they are fixable. Stream restoration processes interest me quite a bit in the fact that they can vary greatly with the type of restoration that is needed. The historical aspect of stream restoration techniques is also quite interesting to me because it is a malleable field that changes over time.
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