Date: May 11, 2000
Time: 2:50 PM

Our Stream Experience....

Today we went to the waste water treatment plant. I never knew we used that much water! And the smell...well duh, but it was really bad and then the soft sprays of "water" that we felt were...umm interesting. Walking over the raw sewage gave me the creeps, but walking to the Kaw and looking at the water coming from the waste treatment plan was reassuring. It looked kind of clean.

Then we went to Burk Creek. It was so beautiful out there. Or at least I thought so. It all seemed so peaceful and quiet. Somehow so undisturbed. We did a lot of tests on the stream water. It was a real big stream! :) But somehow beautiful it it's own way. I really liked it out there. It seems to be the only place in Lawrence that's so undisturbed, that I know of. The only thing that was rather scary was the size of the poison ivy. It was huge! I don't even want to know how it got to be that big. But I really enjoyed the trip.

-Leni

My group at Brooke Creek looked for macroinvertebrates in the water. One person would go into the water with the yellow mesh-filter device while another person kicked up the mud in the water. When they brought it back up on shore it looked like all we had was leaves, but when we took a closer look, we noticed that there were several small creepy crawlers on the net. We found primarily small red worms and a few snails. We also got one crayfish. The leader of our group told us that because it was a commercial stream where residents dump who-knows-what into that not many macroinvertebrates were there

-Unknown

Our Stream Data

Visual Assessment

Weather in the past 24 hours: N/A
Weather Today: N/A

Major Land Uses in the watershed: Roads and/or Parking Lots, Maintained City Parks, Lawns

Trash at the Creek: N/A
Animals at the Creek: Frogs
Animals in the Creek: N/A

Stream Bank Cover (8 is the most, 1 is the least):
Left Bank: Grass (1), Big Trees (1), Shrubs/Small Trees (2), Bare Soil (2)
Right Bank: Grass (1), Big Trees (1), Shrubs/Small Trees (2), Bare Soil (2)

Stream Bank Conditions: Steeply sloping banks

Habitat Types: Pools
Shape of the Channel: Wide (>6 feet), Deep (>3 feet)

What's in the water?: Sticks, Logs, Leaves, Twigs
Is the creek in the sunshine or shade?: Shade
What type of algae are present?: No Algae

Conditions in your stream: Muddy water, Yellow-brown to dark brown water

Embeddedness (on a scale of 1-4, 1 being the least embedded): 1
Content of the Stream Bed (5 is the most, 1 is the least): Sand (1), Gravel (1)

Chemical Assessment

Temperature: 24 C
Dissolved Oxygen: 2 ppm
Percent Oxygen Saturation: N/A
Nitrate: < 5 ppm
Phosphate: 1.5 ppm
pH: 8.5
Turbidity: 40 JTU
Total Coliforms: Positive
Biological Oxygen Demand: 0 ppm
Stream Flow: 0 m/s

Macroinvertebrate Assessment

Sensitive Species: none
Somewhat Sensitive Species: clams, crayfish
Tolerant Species: aquatic worms, midge larvae, pouch snails

How many times did your group sample with the kick net?: 3

Water Quality Determination (as calculated from number of species present): 7
Scale: Excellent (>22), Good (17-22), Fair (11-16), Poor (<11)