The Water Cycle Just Keeps Going...

It's a bit like Groundhog Day here in Erie at the moment (the movie starring Bill Murray, when his character is stuck in a repeating pattern of living Groundhog Day day after day...).

We also appear to be living in a similar pattern of days here in Erie.  Snow.  Rain.  Cold (under 40 degrees).  Repeat the next day.

HOWEVER, there are some indications that the pattern is breaking, albeit ever so slowly.

• The birds are so bright and chipper in the morning.  I heard my first red-winged blackbird March 13th.  They have returned, along with a LOT of Canada Geese.
• We have seen more sunshine, both literally with cloudless days and also because the days are now longer than the nights.
• There is, in fact, less snow on the ground.  There are even patches of open ground.  My coworker swears his yard is clear of snow.  Mine is not, so I don't believe him.  
• Wildlife is becoming much more active.
• There are daffodils about an inch above the ground in my flower bed.  

At this point in the year, it seems as though there is so much water in Erie it will never go away.  We bemoan the mud and seemingly never-ending precipitation.  Of course, it does end.  Then it returns, in one form or another.  A fascinating fact about water is that it is continuously cycling.  It doesn't 'die', no new water is 'born', it just keeps cycling.  

Great Lakes water flow

Think about the possibilities.

The puddle in your driveway may have gone over Niagara Falls.

The water in your faucet may have been part of the ice on Mount Everest.

The water in your apple may have been part of a shark's home.  

Last week, groups of 4th graders from Central Crawford School District participated in science discovery days at Allegheny College.  I was privileged to be invited to present and was asked to address the water cycle.  I took the kids on an Incredible Journey, courtesy of Project WET.  

Students were able to 'be' water molecules traveling throughout the world in different forms and different locations.  At the end of their journey, they were invited to tell the group their story.  How did you move from a cloud to an animal?  How did you travel from a plant to a glacier?  Their imaginations took off, and the concept of water actually cycling and recycling throughout space and time became reality.  

A step further - if water is continually cycling, wouldn't it make sense for humans to take the best care of it we can?  I asked the students three questions:

1. How long can you live without riding in a car?  (It would be inconvenient, but I could live my whole life)
2. How long can you live without watching TV?  (It might be really unpleasant, but I could survive.)
3. How long can you live without clean, accessible water?  (3 days.  Period.)

Perhaps we should reconsider how we use and treat our water, both on an individual basis and as member of the world community.  Water certainly doesn't recognize international boundaries.

I think the children actually look like moving water molecules in this clip:

Winter Water Quality

There is a creek under there.  Can you imagine it?  Sight unseen, continuously flowing and burbling toward Lake Erie.  Which, by the way, is also frozen for the 2014-15 season.  All the way to Canada.  It is not often that the entire lake freezes, but it is a bit easier for Lake Erie to completely freeze, as it is the shallowest of the five Great Lakes.  Due to February 2015 being the coldest February on record since the 1870s (average temperature of 13.1 F), the lake froze.  

Is appears that Mill Creek did also,  even though it is a coldwater stream.  That didn't stop our weekly efforts to take our five water quality samples.  It did, however, slow us down.  

The creek bed is a little easier to spot in the photo above.  I love the shadow of the hemlock on the snow.  Even the shadow appears to have a tint of green.

Interesting comparison, isn't it?  And the wildlife continues on, regardless of the weather.

We found that with a bit of effort, we were able to break though the ice down to the running stream to gather data.  Each week, we gather data from five sites in the Park:  pH, dissolved oxygen, water temperature, conductivity, turbidity, total dissolved solids, salinity, and resistivity.  This week, on March 3rd, we actually recorded water temperature of -.1.  

It's cold here in Erie.

We had to hack through 1-3 inches of ice to access the water.  We could actually stand on the creek.

Our wetlands on the east end of the Park.  You can still see the creek meandering its way through the drifts of snow, headed west and north.  We are finding, at this point, that much of the data is remaining consistent, with the exception of one point that shows a higher temperature than the other four sites.  We will continue to monitor the sites weekly; keeping an eye on the data as we head into snowmelt and stormwater season.  Will the runoff from the neighboring highway, Interstate 90, have an affect on the quality of the water this spring?

One of my favorite black willows in the Park.  It's held through the weight and wind of this harsh winter.

We were fascinated by this video.  

Just stopping and observing what is happening around us makes all the difference.