It’s time to remind you to send in your photos and a few details, as the tank is running dry. In fact, this is the last item in the tank.
Today’s reader is Roger Sorensen, Citizen Scientist. His words are indented, and as lagniappe has a pair of “spot the” photos.
Greetings from “Lake Wobegon”!
I thought I’d finally get a reader photo to you. I’m in my “outdoor office,” the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge in east-central Minnesota. I volunteer there collecting water quality monitoring (WQM) data at seven sites on the St. Francis River in and near the Refuge. The WQM program is a citizen science program run by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. At each sampling site I judge the recreational quality of the river and measure water clarity, temperature, pH, conductivity, and dissolved oxygen. There’s normally a lot of volunteer work going on at the Refuge, but with COVID restrictions in place I’m the only volunteer currently allowed there since this fieldwork is a one-man show with no public or Refuge staff contact.
MPCA Citizen Science: https://www.pca.state.mn.us/water/citizen-water-monitoringAlso, just for fun, I’m including a dead easy “spot the crayfish” photo taken at one of my WQM sites.
Photo:
Reveal:
Where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and the children are above average.
I, like most of the people from Iowa wish we were in Minnesota most of the time. Maybe not so much in winter.
Indeed! Keillor attended St. John’s Univ. (where I worked 1994-2018) in Stearns Co MN and modeled Lake Wobegon on the area.
That looks like a perfect activity for these times—doing important work outside in a beautiful place, without many other people around.
Very cool. Makes me wonder how many WEIT readers do volunteer work in a natural setting. Probably many. I can recommend it. It’s very satisfying work. BTW, I found the crayfish, which I think are called crawdads in some areas of the US.
You get a line, and I’ll get a pole, we’ll go down to the crawdad hole.
They rival the Beatles!
Or, maybe, more like The Stones, who, after all, got their start as the house band at London’s Crawdaddy Club.
Looks to me as if the crayfish has just come out of Quarantine making it easier to see!