Time to Celebrate: West Side Student Summit

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The hard work is over and now it is time to celebrate. Students part of SOLVE’s Green Team Program on the West Side of the Willamette have been working tirelessly all year- learning about riparian ecology and doing active stream restoration. They have spent many days in pouring rain, thick mud, and weaving through thorny blackberry to improve the health of their watersheds. Now, it was time to share our findings and accomplishments with one another, our funders, scientists in the field, and the entire community.

Students arrived in clothes very different from the usual muddy rain gear we are familiar with and we began listening to Meghan (SOLVE) welcome us to the event and thank us all for our hard work. Next, Sarah Pinnock, Wetlands Education Specialist at Jackson Bottom Wetlands Preserve, gave our keynote speech. She has a degree in Environmental Science from Marylhurst University.  She has been an educator and naturalist in the Northwest for 25 years, and has been a Wetlands Education Specialist at Jackson Bottom Wetlands Preserve for almost 13 years. Sarah designs and delivers field science programs and traveling programs for schools and groups, summer camps, adult and family programs. She encouraged us to look for the thing we love doing and to never be afraid to pursue it. It was so great to hear her inspirational words of wisdom!

Next, students presented on topics of their choice from their year working with SOLVE. We heard about everything from how plants sequester carbon to how macroinvertebrates tell us about the quality of the water in our streams. We heard about the incredible amount of work students have done to remove blackberry, ivy, morning glory, Reed canary grass, and to plant native trees and shrubs and take care of them. As a whole, Green Teams on the West Side have planted 2,800 trees and shrubs this school year.

Then we headed out to the lobby to hear about summer internship opportunities and admire all of the incredible garbage art and writing reflections of fellow Green Team students.

Together, as Green Team students in the Portland-Metro area you all have demonstrated that the power of young, informed, and devoted students is unstoppable. Your willingness to learn about the rivers in your backyard and turn that information into positive change is absolutely unbelievable. This positive energy and eagerness to make a difference will truly make this world a better place- in honesty, it already has.

Thank you all so much for being a part of Green Team this year. Congratulations to all of you dedicated stewards of your streams!

Who’s Crawling Up Rock Creek?

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Last week, students from Rock Creek Middle School came out for their last visit to their eponymous creek to do some macroinvertebrate surveys. They had some help from another Green Team for their survey: students from Clackamas High School. Clackamas High School students have been doing macro surveys since October and they even gave an outstanding presentation on their findings from the past year at our Green Team East Side Student Summit, so the Rock Creek Middle School students could not have found better mentors for this activity. The Clackamas Green Team first talked about why doing macro surveys is important by explaining how this survey can give us a good indication to how healthy this creek actually is. They explained that it can be better to look at the invertebrate population in streams rather than looking at chemistry and temperature (which can frequently fluctuate). These bugs live in the stream all the time and are subject to these fluctuations. Since some types of invertebrates are very pollution sensitive and others are more pollution tolerant, looking at the types and numbers of invertebrates in the stream can give a fairly accurate indication of stream health. Then the Rock Creek students split off with their High School mentors to go see what they could find.

It was exciting for everybody because a lot of different kinds of macroinvertebrates were found including pollution sensitive ones like mayflies, stoneflies, and green rock worms, a kind of caddisfly! The presence of these indicate that the stream has not been too compromised by pollution. The restoration work that both Rock Creek Middle School and Clackamas High School have done on Rock Creek in planting natives, and removing invasive plants, all contribute to reducing the pollution flowing in the creek by reducing the amount of sediment, heat, and some chemical pollutants like heavy metals. During their last visit of the school year, it was nice to see that the effort that these students have done all year in trying to restore the Rock Creek Watershed is paying off in keeping the stream healthy.

SOLVE Green Team and the Rock Creek watershed thank you both Rock Creek Middle School and Clackamas for all of your hard work this year!

Thanks to Water Environmental Services for funding this project!

Angiosperm Intervention: Turning Knowledge into Responsibility

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Written by SOLVE Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest Member, Gina Graziano

Valley Catholic High School had been learning about plants and the way they are classified and divided in the classroom. They heard about seed dispersal, the various ways plants produce seeds, and how plants differ from each other. Then, they walked back to Johnson Creek to apply that information to work that would make a huge difference. These students have been constantly using information they learn in the classroom to further understand the concepts and use their knowledge for good out at Johnson Creek this year. We at Valley Catholic believe Spiderman may have been right- with great knowledge comes great responsibility.

And taking responsibility for the health of Johnson Creek is something VCHS students are not afraid to do! We played a guessing game where I described a plant as something that has leaves that are palmately compound, with 5 leaflets, big thorns, produces a flower and a berry.. and before I could say anymore students guessed it! Perhaps you blog readers have guessed it by now too! Yep, Armenian Blackberry. Students said it was an angiosperm and it disperses its seeds through delicious, attractive berries. Animals will eat these berries, defecate them, and the seeds will grow into new plants. While this is a very wonderful, efficient way of dispersing seeds for our native angiosperms, we would rather these Armenian Blackberries not spread all over our site.

We reviewed that these berries will not form until later in the summer and realized our time was very precious! After this realization, we put on some gloves, grabbed a tool, and destroyed the angiosperm known as Armenian/ Himalayan blackberry as fast as possible. We found vines entangled over 15 feet high in Douglas Fir trees, wrapped around native Red Twig Dogwoods, Cottonwoods, and Snow berries. We cut them down and dug them out.

Thank you, Valley Catholic High School, for not just coming out to do the work and heading back into the classroom- but for really caring about the science behind the issues, understanding the problem, and using your knowledge to take responsibility for the health of your watershed. The world will be a better place with your devotion of turning information into positive change and we at SOLVE are so glad to have been witness to that.

How to Shade Reed canary grass when the Solar Eclipse is Over

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Written by SOLVE Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest Member, Gina Graziano

Well, the solar eclipse came and went but not quite long enough to shade out the Reed canary grass at Butternut Creek unfortunately. Students know well that Reed canary grass’  arch nemesis is shade so answering my question, “how do we get rid of Reed canary grass” with “the solar eclipse!” wasn’t too out of this universe, figuratively that is.

So we started to think a little more realistically about the ways we could defeat this invasive, allergy-inducing menace and realized coffee bags and mulch might be the perfect solution! Coffee bags, made from a grass called jute, will suppress the growth of Reed canary grass just next to a native tree or shrub and will eventually biodegrade. Mulch will help our native tree or shrub retain moisture in the warm, summer months and will also do quite a lot to suppress weeds!

So off we went, securing coffee bags into the ground with biodegradable stakes. Our plants look a lot better already.

Thanks so much, Aloha, for all of your incredible work at Butternut Creek this year. You persevered through some tough days of frozen plants on a frosty December morning to high peak allergies on a warm, May day. Your work will be long-lasting and make a difference for the entire watershed.

Thank you, Clean Water Services, for funding this project!

Forest Grove High School: Grasses Have Mustaches

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Written by SOLVE Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest Member, Charlie

This is a very busy and exciting time for the SOLVE Green Team staff! On top of wrapping up the school year for a lot of Green Teams, we just finished up our Summits which were awesome and amazing. One of the Green Teams who has just said ‘farewell’ to their restoration site for the summer was Forest Grove High School at Gale’s Creek.

Clear skies and sunshine were waiting for them at Gales Creek, it was Green Team karma in response to the wet and cold weather they had experienced during their previous two visits. This time they came out, students continued to maintenance on the plants they had planted in the winter by putting biodegradable coffee bags around them. The invasive Reed Canary Grass was nearly chest high in some of the areas so the hard work we have put into staking these coffee bags to suppress invasives from growing right next to the planted natives was very relevant.

Now that spring has officially sprung, so have all of the leaves in the plants, so students also went for a walk learning tips on how to identify plants. They learned that when looking at a woody shrub or tree, the first thing to note is whether or not the leaves grow alternately or opposite one another on the branch. Our opposite “friends” in Willamette riparian zones are SAM & TED (Snowberry, Ash, Maple, Twinberry, Elderberry, & Dogwood). Another clue to help ID is whether the leaves are simple or compound. Students also learned the difference between similar looking sedges, rushes, and grasses. They learned the mnemonic for remembering their differences: sedges have edges (on the stem), rushes are round, and grasses are… we didn’t have one for grasses, so students decided that “grasses have mustaches” would be a good one to start using (mustaches referring to the ligule that grasses have, and I am now obligated to point out that not all grasses have ligules, unfortunately).

The “mustache” of the grass to FGHS students (also known as the ligule)

After exploring and working so hard, students then enjoyed a nice treat and spent their last few minutes at the site, reflecting on their work by writing articles, reflections, poetry, and sketching about their experience at Gales Creek. These will be compiled in a newsletter to distribute to neighbors and residents living next to Gales Creek so they can learn about the hard work Forest Grove High School has been doing.

We at SOLVE have enjoyed working with Forest Grove High School this year, and we are very impressed with the positive impact they have made on their community!

Thank you, Clean Water Services, for funding this project!

East side green teamers reflect on their year of service-learning…

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Written by Meghan Ballard, Green Team Program Coordinator.

Students from SOLVE’s Green Teams on the East Side of the Willamette River joined together last week to share their experiences and the lessons they have learned over the past year.  Hosted at Clackamas High School, students were able to hear about each others’ research and time spent at the creek.

Matthew Collins, Education Director for Friends of Tryon Creek, joined us to talk about the importance of volunteering and how it has personally impacted his life and career choices.    Check out all of the different ways you can volunteer with Friends of Tryon Creek!

Ashley, Lindsey, Joel and Tanner from Gladstone High School started off the student presentations with information about invasive species at Rinearson Creek.  Sam and Katie joined us to represent West Linn High School and their work with stream bioengineering at Abernethy Creek. Portland Lutheran School students Lydia, Rachel, Abi and Arianna
shared their experience with the fun, slimy and smelly salmon toss on the Sandy River. Alexis, Ben, Jesse and Ryan presented on behalf of Clackamas High School and they shared some very interesting findings about their macroinvertebrate surveys of Mount Scott and Rock Creeks.  Fernanda, Kennedy, and Jake from Rex Putnam High School put together a documentary of their work this year at Boardman Wetlands. And students from the Sabin-Schellenberg Technical School gave their perspective on several tools they’ve used this year on invasive removal at Rock Creek.

Charlie(SOLVE) also introduced something new this year, the Clackamas Student Stewardship Award!  This award recognizes a special student or group of students who go above and beyond our usual tasks and contribute something extraordinary to SOLVE and the overall work we do as a Green Team program.  This year’s award was given to three outstanding art students, Chanel Karbonski, Kristy Younglove, & Ashley-Jean Gonzalez who have done AMAZING work transforming litter pulled out of Phillips Creek into beautiful and educational artwork, including the Tom McCall portrait below!

THANK YOU to all of the stellar students and teachers we have had the honor and privilege of working with this year!  It has been one of our most successful Green Team years ever and we are so glad you all were able to share it with us.

Thank you to the following sponsors, partners and friends who attended the summit and for supporting our work:

• Clackamas County Water Environment Services
• Clackamas Soil and Water Conservation District
• Oak Lodge Sanitary District
• Patrick Edwards, Portland State University
• Johnson Creek Watershed Council
• Friends of Trees
• Clackamas River Basin Council
• Friends of Tryon Creek

Amazing litter art!

Encaging West Linn at Abernethy

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Written by Jesuit Volunteer Northwest Member, Charlie

This week was West Linn’s final visit to Abernethy Creek this year. [studio audience: Awwwwwwww...] But what a glorious visit it was. Perfect weather, enthusiastic students, our task was completed: Abernethy couldn’t have asked for a better situation.

After removing invasive species, bioengineering, planting native trees and shrubs, coffee bagging, and mulching, this week’s task was to further protect some of those young, vulnerable, native plants. This time we weren’t protecting them from invasive plants like the coffee bags or drying out like the mulch, but from animals, beavers to be exact. Having beavers on our Green Team sites is a great thing. It not only tells us that our sites are inhabitable, but also the beavers add woody debris and complexity to our streams and rivers. However beavers’ favorite snack is young saplings and they sometimes have a habit of mowing down recently planted trees at our sites. Therefore we need to make beaver cages to protect the trees until they grow large enough to handle being a beaver snack. Now these aren’t cages to trap beavers or keep them in a cage, its to keep them out (unless you bend your mind and look at the whole world as the inside of the cage, sure, then we are caging beavers in). Students constructed over 50 cages out of garden fencing, and then placed them over willow and alder saplings (the beavers’ favorite snacks), and staked them down. Great job guys!

We really appreciate all of the work West Linn has done at Abernethy this year, and we at SOLVE have really enjoyed working with them to improve the watershed of Abernethy Creek!

Too Mulch Fun with Forest Park Elementary!

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Written by SOLVE Jesuit Volunteer Northwest Member, Gina Graziano

Students came runnin’ down the path to find a beautiful, sunny afternoon at Cedar Mill Creek! Unlike our last Green Team activity, the weather was perfect- sunny but not too warm… perfect for doing some stream restoration work. Students gathered round and we reviewed the reasons for dumping buckets of mulch next to all of the native trees and shrubs we planted.

“For nutrients!” one student exclaimed, “to help hydrate them!” another added, and “to get rid of blackberry!” a student shared. All of those reasons are exactly right! Mulch helps retain moisture in the warm, summer months, suppresses weeds such as Armenian Blackberry, and gives the plant some great nutrients it needs to survive!

After that little review, we were off! People were filling buckets in an assembly line of sorts, others shuttling the buckets to plants, and some students even took the time to make plant identification signs in front of some of our plantings! Thanks, Meghan (SOLVE) for helping students identify and spell the names of our plants! Before we knew it, all of our plants were mulched, and ready for summer!

We headed back up to the classroom to have popsicles and review our work as a Green Team this year. Students shared their favorite parts of the year and gave helpful suggestions for Green Team next year. We at SOLVE really appreciate all of your help this year, hope you have a wonderful summer, and can’t wait to see you in the fall!

Thank you Audrey for all of your incredible dedication to the Green Team and thank you parent volunteers who make this stream restoration project possible. And, most of all, thank you wonderful Forest Park Elementary School Green Team for your positive energy and willingness to make a difference in your watershed!

De La Salle, Meet Baltimore Woods; Invasive Blackberry, Meet Your Doom

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Written by SOLVE Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest Member, Charlie

On their annual day of service this Friday, a group of students from De La Salle in North Portland had the opportunity to spend the beautiful day outside working at SOLVE‘s Baltimore Woods site. Under the shadow of St. John’s Bridge, students learned how the Baltimore Woods site is part of a large city-wide project that is hoping to restore a band of green space along the shore of the Willamette river that stretches from north Portland down all the way to Milwaukie. Much of the water the rains on the North Portland neighborhood flows through this site on its way downhill to the river. Having this be a healthy green space can really improve the water quality before it hits the river by filtering out pollutants (like sediment and heavy metals) and cooling down the water (with shade). SOLVE along with several community partners are working on this space to make it more natural, right now it is full of invasive species, such as the invasive Armenian Blackberry and litter.

The De La Salle Students got right to work on the site, removing the invasive blackberry bushes that have started to encroach on some of the native plants Green Teams and volunteer groups had planted this winter. It’s amazing how quickly those blackberry canes grow in the springtime; it seemed that there was nothing there, only a few weeks ago. It’s also amazing how quickly those blackberry canes were removed by the students. After working hard in the sunshine for an hour, everybody took a break and learned about litter, and how much of the litter discarded on the land finds its way to the ocean through rivers and streams. We then finished up the day by doing a litter clean-up along the Willamette. This litter was set aside to be made into art to serve as a piece to spread awareness about the amount of trash in our waterways.

Thanks for all of your incredible hard work De La Salle! The Willamette is a healthier place because of you!

Thank you, Glencoe!

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Written by SOLVE Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest Member, Gina Graziano

After one look at macroinvertebrates on a snowy winter day a few months back, we couldn’t wait to get a look at more bugs and try to analyze their presence and absence in McKay Creek, right behind our school. We got a sense of the bugs, found crazy case-maker caddisflies who have made their shell with Reed Canary Grass, and began to understand how these macroinvertebrates can be an indicator of stream health.

Macroinvertebrates can tell us about the health of a stream more holistically than a pH or chemical water quality test can. These bugs can live in a stream for up to two years and therefore their presence or absence can tell us about the health of a stream beyond the point in time we are sampling for water quality.

Last week, we took a sample of macroinvertebrates from Gales Creek out in Forest Grove and brought it to Glencoe High School to have two different sites to compare. We hypothesized that Gales Creek might be part of a healthier watershed than McKay Creek and wanted to see what the bugs had to say about that.

We grouped up and looked for bugs in our samples. We found case maker caddisflies, tiny copepods, damselflies, and much more. Students are compiling their data and doing an analysis of the data from the entire two days of surveying. We can’t wait to see what the analysis says!

We grouped up one last time to recap all of our incredible work at McKay Creek. We at SOLVE are so thrilled to have created the partnership with Glencoe this year and are so grateful for all the students do to restore their watershed. It is absolutely unbelievable how much blackberry we have removed, how many plants we have planted, and that we have the next three years to watch the trees and shrubs grow, cheering on new freshmen Biology classes who will steward their creek. Thanks for all you do, Glencoe!

Thank you, Clean Water Services, for funding this project!