Initial (Good) Report
Environmental news is often alarming; but a group of 4 Friends members: Jane Darr, Theia Foley, Sara Thorne and Gay Vekovius, can give you a good report. They did a Stream Team analysis of Hightower Creek on December 3. Initially, Darr and Vekovius learned Stream Team techniques from Phil Evans from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission in a session sponsored by Friends of the North Fork and White Rivers at the Fred Berry Conservation Education Center on Crooked Creek. They shared this training with Foley and Thorne. Foley and Vekovius had done a more complete analysis of Hightower Creek in August as a start to regularly conducted analyses.
Hightower Creek is located on the Baxter side west of the Highway 62 bridge between Flippin and Cotter. It is a tributary of the White River, flowing under Denton Ferry road near the private airport and alongside of Foley's property. This team has selected the creek to monitor due to the interest and encouragement of the property owner, and the easy accessibility even with some generation. The lower part of the creek has some water even in dry conditions, and of course, flows more generously with rain.
Our findings are summarized in the following table:
Date Condition Temperature (C) Oxygen mg/L pH Biotic Index
Air / Water
8/31/07 Hot/dry 27.5 / 21 7.4 7.2 Below 11 (poor)
12/3/07 Rain 2 days 22 / 14 14.3 7.5 Over 22 (excellent)
earlier
Of particular note, our analysis of the oxygen content was an encouraging 14.3mg/L, well above the levels considered necessary for good trout life. The team made an "executive" decision to limit our chemical analysis to temperature, oxygen content and pH so only those data from the August testing are in the table. It was our desire to keep the length of time involved within a 2 hour time frame to keep it from being a daunting task.
The best news was the result of our 5 minute "kick." Using a special net, one member disturbs the bottom and another collects the resulting detritus for analysis. We used the Izaak Walton biotic index to group aquatic macroinvertebrates by relative sensitivity to water quality categories (sensitive-Group 1, less sensitive-Group 2 and tolerant-Group 3) based on the general Save Our Streams classification system. No members of group 1 were found, but group 2 members included crawfish, sowbugs and scuds. Group 3 members included aquatic worms and snails. The number of individuals present gave Hightower creek a cumulative index value of 49, indicating excellent stream quality. In August only a couple sow bugs were found suggesting that water quality under hot/dry conditions is poor.
Our small Stream Team plans to monitor Hightower Creek quarterly and build a bank of data for comparison between seasons and years. Considering development in surrounding areas, this data could prove a valuable indicator of change that could alert professionals to the need for management. A table of our data is presented below.
If there are Friends members interested in participating with this team or in regularly analyzing any other area, please contact any of the 4 of us for additional information. This kind of testing can be done by anyone with the interest who is willing to learn a few techniques. Equipment is available for loan. One member of our team pointed out that she felt her grandchildren would enjoy learning to identify macroinvertebrates and using them as an indicator of stream health. Sounds like a good idea!
