By: Lauren McGrath
WCT’s Creek Week is a week-long celebration of the amazing water resources in our region and the incredible life that calls the Ridley, Crum, and Darby Creeks home. Over the next several days, Watershed staff will be posting daily on social media and the WCT blog to share their favorite aspects of water related research. We start small and get bigger over the course of the week!
The week kicks off with an investigation into one of the most concerning recent contaminants of concern: microplastics. Drexel University Co-op Dejenae Smith is working with WCT and PolyGone Systems to study and remove microplastics from the environment.
Tuesday and Wednesday bring the fascinating world of biofilms into focus! Sarah Barker, WCT’s Watershed Technician, shares her love of the slimy microscopic world that coats the rocks and floats in the water column beginning with microalgae and diatoms. This is a two part series that you do not want to miss!
Thursday zooms back out to look at the larger and more easily identified photosynthesizing community that lines waterways: Riparian trees! Dejenae shares what she has been learning through her co-op on how to read the landscape along a waterway and the role that these beautiful native plants play in keeping streams and rivers healthy.
Friday’s blog post features Lauren Carroll, a high school senior from Conestoga High School, who shadowed the Watershed Protection Program over the month of May. Lauren is interested in a career in chemistry, and had the opportunity to help WCT understand how water chemistry changes in a stream, and how that experience may have changed her view of future careers in a positive way!
Creek Week wraps up with a love letter to one of the rarest stream residents in Ridley Creek: the American river otter. An otter was spotted in Ridley Creek in December 2023, and this blog looks into why seeing this elusive watershed resident is such big news that we are still excited about it.
Along with all of the virtual education this week, the Watershed Protection Program team is also excited to get into Ridley Creek with you! Join us on Wednesday, June 11 at Ashbridge Preserve to Uncover Living Clues to Stream Health! On Thursday, June 12, you can spend the morning working side by side with Watershed and Stewardship staff for Stewardship Thursday, also at Ashbridge Preserve. If a weekday morning does not work for your schedule, never fear! Watershed will also be out at Ashbridge Preserve on Saturday, June 14.
Thank you for joining WCT this week and wherever you are joining us from, we hope that you can take some time to connect with the incredible and resilient natural world!
Funding for this project was awarded through the “Protect Your Drinking Water” grant program, administered by the Pennsylvania Environmental Council with funding from Aqua, an Essential Utilities company.
