GEORGIA Adopt-A-Stream Volume 17, Number 1 January/February 2010 Editors: Allison Hughes, Tara Muenz Department of Natural Resources Environmental Protection Division Adopt-A-Stream In Action 2009: Meeting our Four Goals and Beyond! As you all know AAS has 4 goals (you will see this bolded and on the test!). Some of you may memorize these by the acronyms DAPT or ADOPT (less the O) or IPEC. Anyway you can remember this, good for you! We make these goals a top priority at the State Office and use them to foster growth and development of the program. We reflect often, and take a step back from where we were, how we did, and where we'd like to be for the program as a whole. A major part of this reflection is how we can better support those who make this program happen, our volunteers! Let's take a look at how we met these goals in 2009. Increase Awareness The Adopt-A-Stream program works diligently to increase public awareness of water quality issues in Georgia. In 2009, we accomplished this by delivering our bi-monthly newsletter to over 5,000 households statewide, providing our manuals and resources on our website and hosting numerous workshops. Our online database became fully live and more functional for volunteers, trainers, and the State Office! It now offers online visualization of monitoring data whether it's a multi-year monitoring program or a large watershed-wide snapshot. Provide Tools and Training Remember all those wonderful trainers that provided you with your certifications and training? It's been an amazing and busy year for them all and we had 51 very active trainers in 2009 leading over 241 workshops, training over 2,065 volunteers! Great news too, we recruited eleven new trainers, four of those in Southwest Georgia, one in Macon, five in Metro-Atlanta, one in Athens, and one in Calhoun. Changes are being made to our visual, watershed and amphibian programs, so look for those changes and updated workshops in 2010! Creating Partnerships Adopt-A-Stream puts much effort in to sustaining our partnerships and fostering the growth of new ones. Through our partnership with the Georgia River Network we assisted with their Annual Conference and Paddle Georgia 2009, a weeklong paddle on the Oostanaula and Coosawattee Rivers. The Environmental Education Alliance of Georgia and Environmental Education in Georgia remain strong partners helping us connect with educators through annual conferences and on-line resources. The AAS Advisory Board hit a growth spurt this year as we added ten new members representing the educational, non-profit, governmental and private sectors. These new board members will help us redesign our AAS Educator's Guide, provide input for the design and implementation of our Amphibian Monitoring QA/QC program, and assist with special events and volunteer recognition. Collect Baseline Water Quality Data As we all know, collecting baseline water quality data is key to understanding the health of a waterway and determining background levels. If data is outside of the normal range, this may signal that additional measures need to be addressed. This year, baseline data for 282 sites was collected during 1,498 monitoring events. We had 106 new sites and 51 new groups register bringing our total active sites to 282 and active groups to 163, an increase of 11.9% from last year. Way to go AAS volunteers! (continued on page 2) Year In Review Continued... Top Groups and Monitoring Sites for 2009: Our Adopt-A-Stream groups devote many hours at the stream and behind the computer each month to ensure collection of baseline water quality data. We would like to recognize and honor our top ten monitoring groups and the sites with the most consistent data collection events. Thank you for all that you do to protect our most vital natural resource. Rivers were `Alive' this year! What a year it was (and still is!) for Rivers Alive cleanups! 2009 marked the launch of the new online, year-around registration. This enabled us to facilitate convenient registration and data entry while advertising cleanups statewide and encouraging cleanups throughout the entire year. An abundance of rain fell this fall causing some rivers to clean themselves while many lakes were overloaded with streams of debris. Although this put a damper on some cleanups, new ones emerged and volunteers were resilient. This can be evidenced by the new records set during 2009 including over 24,000 volunteers attending a record number of cleanups events, thereby removing nearly 800,000 lbs of trash from 2110 miles of waterways. Great job volunteers and thanks for your patience in rescheduling your cleanups! It's all Upstream From Here: With two state coordinators now, Allison and Tara have many, many goals for 2010! These include the kickoff of the Confluence, increasing our contact with regional trainers, coordinators and AAS groups, as well as finalizing those updates we mentioned previously to the visual, watershed and amphibian programs and educator's guides. Again, a major part of our reflection and goal setting is based on how we can better support you, our volunteers! We encourage you to share your innovative ideas and thoughts with us, as many of our program advances have resulted from volunteer feedback. This is as much your program as ours, and we hope that you take an active role in 2010 to support the continued growth of Georgia Adopt-A-Stream. Happy New Year! Adopt-A-Stream Welcomes our New Groups! (groups registered 11/21/2009 through 01/03/2010) Fernbank Stream Ecology Group, DeKalb County Lougee Twins, Gwinnett County Dunne's Destroyers, Forsyth County Tumbling Waters of Little Amicalola Creek, Dawson County Euharlee Creek Group, Polk County White Oak Hills Stream Monitors, DeKalb County Sod Squad, Richmond County Chattahoochee Hills Creek Keepers, Fulton County Confluence Updates Mark your calendars and register for the upcoming AAS Confluence on Saturday, February 27th, at Stone Mountain Park. This will be an opportunity to meet other volunteers, share words of wisdom, receive program updates and tools for your monitoring program. On-Line Registration Now Open!! Confluence information and registration can be found online at georgiaadoptastream.org or by calling the state office at 404.675.6240. Registration is $20.00 per person and includes Confluence materials, special edition t-shirt (if you register by February 8th), meals and door prizes. Confluence Agenda: We have based the agenda on the responses to our volunteer survey. Thanks to all of you who took the time to share your thoughts about what you would like to experience at the Confluence. 8:00--8:55 9:00--9:15 9:15--9:45 9:45--9:55 10:00--10:25 10:30--10:55 11:00--11:45 11:50--12:40 12:45--1:25 1:30--1:55 2:00--2:25 2:30--2:55 3:00--3:25 Registration--Breakfast--Exhibit Area Open Welcome--Opening Remarks Joe Cook (CRBI) with Legislative Updates Break--Disperse to First Session -HANDS ON - -PANEL DISCUSSION- -PRESENTATION- AAS Bacterial Monitoring Ask the Expert Pharmaceuticals in the Water Fats, Oils, Grease Program Break--Networking-Exhibits-Basin Breakouts-Posters Lunch and AAS Awards Keynote Speaker: U.S. Olympic Gold Medalist, Joe Jacobi AAS Amphibian Monitoring Q&A Session: AAS Coordinators & Award Winners Working with your Data Watershed Wide Surveys AAS Visual & Watershed Program AAS in the Classroom Advanced Water Quality Parameters "Who to Call" 3:30--4:00 Closing Remarks & Hike up the Mountain! Call for Posters: We are seeking AAS groups to present their monitoring program through our poster session. Thank you to our Sponsors: If you would like to become a Confluence sponsor, please contact us at 404.675.6240 or aas@gaepd.org. Thank You To Our Active Trainers; You are Gold to Us! (Trainers who have led at least one workshop in 2009) Laura Aikens Sam Booher Al Browning Frank Carl Judith Coenen Patti Cook Duncan Cottrell Vicki Culbreth Kevin Finney Lori Forrester Scarlett Fuller Tina Godsey Renee Gracon Harold Harbert Jessica Harper Annie Huff Allison Hughes Bob Joyner Chris Kodani Eric Lindberg Jennifer McCoy Susan Meyers Kate Mobray James Moore Tara Muenz Robert Phillips David Promis Brenda Rashleigh Michael Reardon Melissa Rottenberg Alina Ruiz Andrea Sarisky Tom Sewell Mary Carol Sheffield Tyler Sims Kevin Smith Lora Smith Sharon Smith Katherine Schroer Ray Sprankle Anne Stahley Brian Sterner Cynthia Taylor William Tietjen Emily Toriani Kelly Voss Angela Wall Courtney Waltz Tom Weiland Dave Wenner Brian Wiley Jeff Dancer -Colquitt Kevin Drace - Macon Mike Hill - Alpharetta Welcome New Trainers Bob Joyner - Columbus John Malloy - Thomasville Dan McBee - Calhoun Ellen Milholland - Roswell Drew Miller - Thomasville Eric Prowell -Athens Jason Ulseth - Atlanta Andrew Walter - Atlanta Please visit our calendar of events at www.GeorgiaAdoptAStream.org for upcoming monitoring workshops and Adopt-A-Stream events. The Georgia Adopt-A-Stream Newsletter is published six times per year. For more information about the Georgia Adopt-A-Stream program or to contribute to the newsletter, call or write to: Georgia Adopt-A-Stream Environmental Protection Division 4220 International Parkway, Suite 101 Atlanta, GA 30354 404.675.6240 www.GeorgiaAdoptAStream.org Dragonfly Riffle Beetle Dobsonfly Stonefly Net Spinning Caddisfly