Teacher Matt Jackson has mastered the art of directing his 7th grade students through five water-testing stations. The lesson begins the night before with a homework assignment asking students to read through and paraphrase why we test water features; and what can temperature, turbidity, levels of ammonia, nitrates, dissolved oxygen, and salinity tell us about the health of our creeks and tidal slough. Each student independently reads and explains the significance of each water element tested. By asking students to become familiar with the purpose of each test, when they begin testing the following day they have context and understand the value of their results.

The following morning students filter into the classroom where their tables have been set up as testing stations. Each station has materials for four students to test one feature of the water. Mr. Jackson has collected two buckets of water from nearby Lynch creek, and they now sit filled in the front of the class. He instructs the students that they will be rotating, with their table group, through five testing stations. Because testing salinity and temperature are quick, students complete those tests at one station. The students testing the ammonia level dictate the timing of the rotations, as the test requires a five-minute wait.

What is a watershed, why is it important, and how can we better understand our place in it?

These questions drive the Watershed Classroom, our teachers, and our students. As technology and media continue to be paramount in our lives, the understanding of our interconnectedness is often overlooked or forgotten.  When our community once bartered eggs for goods, harvested food from local gardens and farms, our relationship to our local environment was very clear. But when we begin buying food from stores and online, staying inside to enjoy media rather than parks, the relationships within the community and environment become more vague. Vague relationships are easy to forget. Petaluma educators have the weighty task of reintroducing students to their surroundings, to our unique and historical watershed.

Watershed Classroom teachers bring students out of the classroom and show them the richness around them.

YOUSEF BAIG - Argus Courier Staff

The once mighty Petaluma River, a former hub for commerce and recreation, was once one of the defining features of the southern Sonoma County landscape and a vital link between Petaluma and the San Pablo Bay.

Now, 15 years removed from the last dredging, an 18-mile tributary many residents have dubbed “the heart of the city” has become a muddy, silt-choked slough, with little relief in sight.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a federal agency under the Department of Defense, is supposed to dredge the upper Petaluma River every four years, and the mouth where it meets the bay every three years. The flats channel, which begins beneath the Highway 37 overpass east of Novato, was last dredged in 1998.

It was another stunning day at the San Pablo Baylands, when thirty of Linda Judah’s high school Biology students flocked to the restored tidal marsh determined to identify and count birds. Initially students groaned that there were no birds in sight. The high tide meant that the many tidal birds that dot the shores at low tide were elsewhere awaiting their daily timed feast.

Monitoring the marsh bird species is especially valuable as indicators for assessing the health of the wetland ecosystems, and species presence and quantity is a measurement of the success of wetland restoration. Marsh bird populations are expected to increase as the tidal marsh habitat matures; therefore, monitoring changes in bird populations provides evidence of the success of the restoration.