March 2017 monitoring

March 25 – an absolutely gorgeous day! It’s been warmer than usual; yesterday a “cold front” with a bit of rain came through. Result: a beautiful, sunny and cool day. We monitored at the same time and the shadows were noticeably longer since it’s now daylight savings time.

The very first thing I noticed was that the inflowing creek from the parking lot was full… and the sidewalk over the culvert is still wet, water is still flowing over it. Looks like that’s the new normal (note to self: continue to wear water shoes). The algae I noticed growing in the sidewalk water last month is now gone but there are water walkers and other bugs. And the water flowing over the sidewalk flows down the rocks and ends up in the main stream a bit upstream of the culvert. I could almost walk up to the “sometime island” rocks in the middle of the stream.

The birds were chirping (though still no pigeons seen or heard) and the air smelled fresh and clean with a hint of flowers. We saw a few gambusia (minnows) near the sample site.

There’s more algae (as expected) around the waterfall. And the waterfall flow was much smaller than last time, thanks to not much rain recently. And the e-coli count is low, 3 ML samples at the site averaged 200 colonies (below the acceptable for an urban stream); the control site by the waterfall had 33 colonies.

Observations:

air temp 17 C
water temp 17.5 C
dissolved oxygen 5.2
specific conductance 580
Nitrates .25 mgL
transparency > 1.2 M

sample site from north bank

sample site from streamside

stream under bridge to trail crossing from north bank

trail crossing from streamside

stream under bridge from streamside

stream under bridge

all 4 columns in water

stream-upstream side of bridge

stream from above culvert

inflowing creek (culvert)

wet sidewalk above culvert

wet walkway over culvert & overflow

upstream view from under bridge

creek inflowing from parking low

waterfall with algae

wet rocks by waterfall area

waterfall area and above

downstream view above waterfall

dry inlet and stream above waterfall

upstream of waterfall

dissolved oxygen 5.2