Culvert locations! A slideshow (and update)

Hello Culvert Teachers!

Well, Lynn Alley and her group wrapped up our field season last Tuesday, October 23, so I wanted to give you a summary of culverts and think ahead to the next steps in our project.

We sampled the following culverts this fall:

Town	Date	Stream	Road	Culvert Material	Perched?
Edmunds	9/25/12	Burnt Cove Stream	Lower Edmunds Road	corrugated metal	No
Penobscot	9/26/12	Mill Brook	No pictures or information available
Surry	9/28/12	Smelt Brook	Morgan Bay Road	corrugated metal	Yes
Old Town	9/26+27/12	Pug Brook	Rt. 43 (Old Town Road)	concrete	No
Old Town	10/1/12	Bike Path marsh stream	Bike path behind the elementary school	Stone	No
Lincolnville	10/12/12	Black Brook	Slab City Road	Plastic	No
Jonesport	10/23/12	Southwest Creek	Rt. 187	corrugated metal	Yes

 

Each of these streams was different; each culvert was different.

 

To a varying degree we found similar organisms in most of the streams- mayflies, stoneflies, dragonflies, damselflies, some hellgrammites and a few craneflies. In Lincolnville we found freshwater clams. We do not know yet what the relative abundances are of these different organisms, and do not know about the relative abundance of the different functional feeding groups (FFG). I cannot wait to get the data back from the lab!

 

I heard a couple of field claims being tossed around. These were based from field observations, and were really nice. If they can be backed up with reasoning then they will be excellent. Have a classroom discussion about the different field sites, the upstream and downstream of each culvert. What is the same, what is different. Compare these to what you know about the habitat needs of organisms your students researched. We will have some early data soon- these will be gross numbers of groups, not broken down by FFG yet.

Attached is a PowerPoint presentation of the sampling locations. You’ll find pictures of all of the locations listed above (except Penobscot) and at the end of the slides there are some questions for you and the students to think about.

The next stage in this research process is to take all of the information you have at hand—what you know about macroinvertebrates, what you know about the sampling locations, what you observed in the field—and pose some questions about the macroinvertebrate communities above and below your culvert, or other culverts, and propose some possible answers (a.k.a. scientific claims, or hypotheses) to those questions. These proposed answers may force people a little out of their comfort zone.  Use the resources in Unit 3: Questions and Claims (https://participatoryscience.org/content/unit-3-creating-scientific-claims) as a guide.

It’s good to start with “Knowing what I know about streams and macroinvertebrates…”

Then ask some questions… about the macros, about the streams.

And then state a possible answer to the questions. There is no right or wrong, only well thought out possible answers, and not-so-well thought out possible answers.

Our goal is to get the students to state their scientific claims (or hypotheses) in an “If, Then… Because” format.

(here’s an example: “We observed that the habitats above and below our culvert were. Above, it was slow moving; below, it was fast moving. IF the difference in stream habitat does affect stream macroinvertebrate communities THEN we expect that there will be different macroinvertebrate assemblages above and below the culvert BECAUSE some organisms like fast moving water, some like slow moving water, and some don’t have a preference.” If the students wanted to go farther they could and state what exactly the differences in assemblages would be, based on the fast/slow preferences.)

Your samples are at the lab and it will be a few more weeks before the data are available. You should have the scientific claims before the data come back. Otherwise it is very tempting to let the data drive the scientific claim instead of using the data to support or not support the scientific claim. We are here to help and can meet with any of you who feel a little uncertain about this part of the scientific process. ALSO! Ask the whole group. You can help each other!

It’s an exciting time in the process; I look forward to hearing the scientific claims!

Here to help!

Cheers, Hannah

 

Attachment	Size
CulvertSamplingLocations(2012)_rr.ppt	5.4 MB