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!

Roots & Shoots Spread Environmental Awareness

Written by SOLVE Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest Member, Gina Graziano 

It is one thing to understand a watershed, the importance of planting native trees and shrubs, and know the ins and outs of a site, but it is a whole other, wonderful thing to spread that awareness among a community. And we at Green Team believe there are no better voices to do that then the young, hopeful students who have been stewarding their stream over the entire school year! So, that’s exactly what Roots & Shoots did at Ryland Park.

First, students composed a very reflective, creative, and informative newsletter about their work at Council Creek and what it has meant to them. We put it all together with help from Meghan (SOLVE), and printed a very spiffy newsletter. We met up at Ryland Park to pass out this newsletter to community members on both sides of the creek. We hope the community enjoys reading these very inspiring updates about their neighborhood!

 

Roots & Shoots students, being the incredibly active and aware young people they are, thought this would be the perfect time to educate the neighborhood about storm drain runoff as well! We distributed door hangers with useful information and marked storm drains throughout the neighborhood to remind people that runoff does not simply go “somewhere else,” but right into Council Creek. With so much hard work done at the creek, we would hate to see it being polluted. It is also home to many native animals, like Red Winged Blackbirds, who never cease to sing while we are working in the wetland! Please do all you can to avoid pollution in storm water runoff.

Oh! As if that was not enough, students also picked up trash in the neighborhood to donate to Rachel Carson Environmental Middle School’s endeavor of making a garbage float for the Starlight Parade! This float will also increase environmental awareness and has made our creeks much cleaner.

Roots & Shoots, Council Creek is so much healthier because of each one of you incredible students. Your knowledge of environmental processes and issues will go far and we are so glad you shared it with us at SOLVE.

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

King Elementary Says “Farewell” to Abernethy Creek

Written by SOLVE student volunteer, Gavin

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On Friday King Elementary’s very own Green Team ventured on their last journey of the year to Abernethy. The kids got to look at what they have accomplished throughout the year when they took a tour of the site to see how everything is doing in the spring sunshine. The invasive reed canary grass was already 4 feet high and it was quite obvious why the plants needed to be coffee-bagged. They did find one good use for the invasive grass: games, and students played a rousing round of “Camouflage!” where students pretended to be mice hiding from a hungry owl. Then they reflected on their work by writing some poems and drawing inspiring art about their time at Abernethy. Afterward the team munched on some delicious cookies as a reward for all their hard work. Throughout the year the Green Team students accomplished much at Abernethy; they learned about unhealthy and healthy streams, coffee bagged to protect young trees from invasive species, planted native trees to give shade to the stream, willow staked to prevent the sides of the stream from eroding, beaver caged to protect the saplings from hungry beavers, mulched native plants to make sure they don’t dry out in the summer, and they examined micro-invertebrates, which showed the health of the stream. All in all the Green Team did their part in making Abernethy a healthy watershed! They achieved much and learned a lot, while having a fun time doing it! Congratulations to the Green Team at King Elementary for all your hard work in making Abernethy Creek the beautiful watershed it deserves to be!

Rock Creek Middle School and the Tall Grass Smackdown

By SOLVE Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest Member, Charlie

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A lot of the work at our sites is suddenly becoming relevant as the skies are drying up and the grass is growing much longer. This was especially evident at Rock Creek on Monday when Rock Creek Middle School came out to help improve the riparian ecosystem.

When students got to the site, they noticed that the grass growing around the plants seemed to have grown a full foot in the week since they had visited the site two weeks ago. Already many of the plants that the Rock Creek Middle School Green Team had planted this winter were dwarfed by the grass and fighting for the precious sunlight. To encourage these young native plants to thrive and grow into a nice healthy riparian ecosystem, the Rock Creek Middle School students got right to work placing coffee bags around the base of the young native plants. These coffee bags are made of jute – a biodegradable grass – and when staked around our native plants, they suppress the resource-stealing grass from growing right next to the native plants. Students also spent some time mulching the recently coffee-bagged plants. As the weather continues to get drier, having a nice layer of mulch above the roots will be really helpful in preventing these young short-rooted plants from drying up before they really get established.

After they left the site, their hard work was evident: each native plant had their own growing and breathing (and photosynthesizing?) space, like a little sanctuary island in a sea of tall menacing grass. With their help this new site is definitely on the way to developing into a nice native habitat. Rock Creek thanks you, Rock Creek Middle School Green Team!

Showing off Our Mussels

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Written by SOLVE Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest Member, Gina Graziano

As the school year comes to a close, Rachel Carson Environmental Middle School students have a lot to show off. Working incredibly hard at Willow Creek nearly every Wednesday of the school year, from 8:30am-1:00pm, students have accomplished an extraordinary amount of restoration work.

While our hard restoration work has surely given us muscles to be proud of, it has also given us mussels to be proud of! We have noticed shells of mussels in Willow Creek for quite some time but have just recently discovered what type of mussels they belong to, how their life cycle works, and why it is so cool to see them at our site!

The mussel shells or “valves” we have found belong to Oregon Floater Mussels, a type of mussel native to the Pacific Northwest. While most all mussels are fairly pollution sensitive, they are one of the more tolerant of the mussels of the Pacific Northwest. They reproduce sexually, creating embryos called glochidia. These glochidia then attach to the gills of a host fish where they are encapsulated by a small cyst which gives them the nutrients they need to grow. After a couple of weeks of being a parasite on a host fish, it falls off to rest on the benthic (bottom) area of a stream where it will hardly travel a few yards in its adult life. These mussels can live up to 100 years and are great biomonitors and contributors to the overall health of the stream.

While we were learning all about mussels, students were surveying the creek for macroinvertebrates, another type of biomonitor! Students found all sorts of bugs and managed to keep them a secret from the incoming class so they could discover the bugs for themselves!

Towards the end of the day one student asked, “If mussels are so good to have at Willow Creek, why don’t we just breed more and add them to the creek?” We all thought about it for a minute and realized that we have been doing just that. Sure, we do not have a mussel breeding operation in the works, but we have been increasing habitat, creating healthy water conditions, and caring for the overall health of the watershed.

We realized that you can’t just introduce an animal, you have to re-build its habitat and let the animal come back. Students for the past eight years have been introducing more and more wildlife to Willow Creek, possibly without even knowing it. Every tree planted, Reed Canary Grass patch shaded, and new shrub coffee bagged re-creates a healthy watershed, a creek full of life, and habitat for many species that do not have many wild places left to live in the Portland-Metro Area. Willow Creek and I will greatly miss our Wednesday ritual together over the summer but deeply appreciate all of the energy, questions, and hard work you have given to the project.

It will be so wonderful to hear more about the increased life at Willow Creek at the summit! Can’t wait to see you then!

Thank you, Clean Water Services, for funding the project.