ABOVE PHOTO: UW-Stout Associate Professor Keith Gilland, right, instructs two high school students as they measure Gilbert Creek during a water volume test.
Gilbert Creek in Dunn County slips through marshland and oak savanna between chest-high grasses and flowering plants. It can be hard to find and reach during the glory of midsummer.
Yet, one section of the slender creek — one of more than 12,000 rivers and streams in the state — was busy on a recent day as University of Wisconsin-Stout professors, UW-Stout students and high school students from Wisconsin paid a visit and gave it some special attention.
Thanks to two Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin grants, the group parted the grasses to find the stream, waded in, employed special testing equipment and collected data at the Gilbert Creek Fisheries and Wildlife Area.
One of the grants is the Red Cedar Basin Monitoring Program, nearly $72,000 UW-Stout received earlier this year to do work like at Gilbert Creek, where students checked for macroinvertebrates, measured for water clarity and volume, tested for ammonia and more.
The second FCW grant included professors and students from UW-Stout guiding six high school students for the day. The high school students were taking part in a weeklong program called Freshwater Science Field Experience in Western Wisconsin: The First Step in Developing a Skilled Workforce. Led by UW-Eau Claire, it included water-focused days at UW-Stout, UW-River Falls and UW-Oshkosh.
“This will help the high school students build awareness of the potential careers in this field and develop some skillsets,” said UW-Stout Associate Professor Keith Gilland, who teaches in the environmental science program.
The section of Gilbert Creek that the group tested was seven miles west of Menomonie on Highway 29, near Highway Q. That section previously had been restored; the new data will help show how well the restoration is holding up, Gilland said.
Gilland and other professors lead similar water testing in a general education biology course at UW-Stout. The data goes into a state database, which helps determine which bodies of water are most in need of attention and state funding. Also facilitating the project for UW-Stout was Professor Amanda Little.
The data also will be used to help develop a new 10-year plan for managing the Red Cedar River watershed, Gilland said.
Gilbert Creek flows into the Red Cedar River at Menomonie. CLICK HERE TO DIP INTO THE FULL STORY
