Blog
Browse this page for blog postings related to middle- and high-school-teacher Adventure Learning workshops taking place across Idaho. Use the widgets to the right (or at bottom of this page, for smaller devices) to filter blog posts.
Citizen Science on the River
IBO (Intermountain Bird Observatory) is mostly known for their Lucky Peak Observatory on top of Lucky Peak. However many of you may not be aware that two seasons ago they opened another location that is more accessible on the Boise River. Just past the highway 21 bridge off to the right you will find the Boise River banding site. The IBO has a schedule of days of which they are banding and want interested people to attend. If you have never released a songbird from you hand you will be impressed. One of the goals of IBO is to get people interested in birds and what they are doing on... more
Interconnected
Oh the tangled web we weave. Our complicated connection with all the stakeholders of the Boise watershed became even more complicated today when we visited the SUEZ water treatment facility. We were given a great tour of this privately owned water treatment system. So there I started scratching my head….humm...private. Some stats that I learned: 82 million gallons of water are drawn into the facility per day. Of that water, 70% comes from wells that tap into the aquifer, and the remaining 30% comes directly from the Boise River. The untreated water goes through a complex process and is... more
Welcome to Wednesday!
Good morning digital-learners,
Today's theme is Ecosystem Services of Biodiversity. We are starting the morning by banding birds and learning about population monitoring with the Idaho Bird Observatory. We will then take a tour of the Suez drinking water treatment plant.Holly Hovis, from the Bureau of Land Management will then take us on a tour of the gardens at Roosevelt Elementary. We will discuss the benefits of school gardens such as providing hands-on learning in a sensory rich environment, introducing Idaho's biodiversity to students, and how to connect gardens with lesson... more
To Mine or Not to Mine?
One of the many good questions asked today by our adventure-learners camping in Idaho City, is, "Do you think that new mining operations should be allowed within the Boise River watershed?"
It's a seemingly simple question, but like so much of what we are learning in this workshop, there is a lot of complexity and many shareholders who are a part of the decision making process. Mining, even when done following environmental regulations and with a care to protect our environment as much as possible, is still incredibly damaging to local ecosystems and watersheds. The environmental... more
Managing Our Watershed For Water's Sake.
Our watershed is quite complex! I loved learning about it several years ago, and I really enjoyed teaching my students about its complexity. It's crazy to think how many people rely on it, the vast areas it stretches out to sustain, and the affects a tiny human can have upon it. It's crucial that we keep it sustainable and truly research our impact we have upon it-both near and far. Idaho is a very rural state and it relies on the farmers to help support it, as a whole. Those farmers rely on the watershed to sustain their crops. From there...it must sustain the rest of the state. In the... more
Water management
What's interesting is that our current water year we've seen the ability of what the storagesystem of BWS is capable of...we also were able to observe just how lucky those who live near the Boise river were as well as how accurate the instruments and extrapolations the hydrologists at the army corp and BoR can be. I mean, the river was running at over 6k cfs for almost four months (https://waterwatch.usgs.gov/?m=real&r=id&w=map) and because we lucked out with spring temperatures major flooding was avoided.
... more