Streamkeeper News
Bio Blitz & City Nature Challenge

In April, we're hosting our annual watershed wide BioBlitz.

What's a BioBlitz? During a BioBlitz, people gather to document as many species as possible (animals, plants, insects, and more!) in a given area, over a set period of time.

Our BioBlitz is running from April 24 through May 3. You can participate from anywhere in our watershed by taking a picture on your smartphone and then submitting it through the iNaturalist app. Make sure to join the Spring 2021 BioBlitz Tookany/Tacony Frankford Watershed Partnership page so you can follow everyone's observations. Any picture taken in our watershed automatically gets added to our BioBlitz project.

The City Nature Challenge is happening at the same time, from April 30 to May 3. Cities participate in this global challenge to find and identify as many species as possible during the time window. The challenge area includes Philadelphia as well as surrounding Delaware, Montgomery, Bucks, Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties. Want to learn about how to be involved? Check out this webinar.

We will use iNaturalist and citizen science tools later this year to document species at our restoration sites. Watershed and habitat restoration go hand and hand...we want your help to document this success story. We'll create projects in iNaturalist and ask you to get out and explore. Keep an eye out for more exciting news on this project!

Interested in learning more? Contact Ryan@ttfwatershed.org
Update: Creek Care Day
We hope to have a productive year of second Saturday cleanups.

We greatly missed our volunteers most of last year! We can't wait to see all of you and what we can achieve in 2021. Without your help, we couldn't achieve even half of the work that we do!

Our first 2021 Creek Care Day took place at Ethel Jordan Park on Saturday March 13. Volunteers removed invasive species from the riparian buffer, including porcelain berry, wineberry and oriental bittersweet. Thank you to everyone who came out and helped!

We will host a maintenance day at McKinley Elementary School on Saturday, April 10 from 10am to 12pm. We will focus on repairing fencing and tree tubes meant to protect young trees, as well as removal of invasive species.

Interested in attending a monthly cleanups? Contact ryan@ttfwatershed.org
Want to help cleanup but can't make one of these dates? Fill out the volunteer form on our website!
Rain Barrel Workshop
Join us for this FREE webinar on rain barrels and what you can do to better manage stormwater at home. Learn about rain barrels, including tips about installation.

Wednesday April 21, 6:30pm-7:45pm.
Register Here.

Rain barrels store rain to be released in drier weather, helping our creeks by decreasing the impact of pollution and reducing demand on our stormwater system. Barrels save you money because you'll use less tap water. Use stored water for gardens and lawns, or to wash your patio furniture and cars.
Streamkeeper Spotlight: Andrea McCarthy
When did you start as a TTF Streamkeeper?
I started monitoring in October 2018, a few months after I moved to the region. The generous and knowledgeable Dave Bell has been my Streamkeeper partner that whole time.

Where is your site?
I monitor TFF1300, which is at the confluence of the Jenkintown and Tookany Creek at Tookany Creek Park. It's a nice site to visit where we usually see other people out using the trail and walking along the creek.

Why do you volunteer with TTF?
I have been fascinated by the ecosystems in bodies of water my whole life. There are so many different types of species with interesting life cycles. To mention one, some caddisfly larvae make portable tubular cases from silk they produce and incorporate specific materials such as sand, rocks, or others that are species specific! Many waterway ecosystems are threatened by various human induced causes, and I would rather my impact be to help preserve these ecosystems.

Tell us about yourself!
I enjoy seeking out new experiences whether that is traveling to different places, meeting new people, or trying to learn a new skill. And you'll probably catch me wearing earrings to match the season or holiday.
Valuable Training Opportunities
The first Streamkeeper training of the year was held in February and focused on construction site monitoring. We first hosted construction site monitoring training in 2019, with a presentation from River Network.

The training program was adopted from several similar programs across the country, to help reduce sediment entering creeks from construction sites. Collen Waters of River Network outlined issues associated with construction sites in regards to water quality, as well as walking through steps to make sure construction sites are doing all they can to keep our waterways healthy. River Network has developed a field guide to streamline the process of monitoring a construction site, recording the appropriate information and reporting to appropriate authorities.

You can watch the recording of this training session here. Want to participate in construction site monitoring? Contact ryan@ttfwatershed.org
Streamkeepers Lend a Critical Hand & Voice
For the first time in a few years, we had a real taste of winter this year! The snow and winter weather impacted our watershed.

You probably noticed parking lots and streets covered in salt, but where does all this salt go? It ends up in our creeks!

Our Streamkeepers have been busy participating in Winter Salt Watch, an Izaak Walton League of America program that encourages volunteers to monitor chloride levels in local creeks. In the Philadelphia area, the League has sent out 300 winter salt watch kits and received over 125 reports for the Winter of 2020-2021. With all of the snow, there have been large spikes in chlorides across the region. A number of reports showed readings over 600ppm! You can view the map of test results here.

For more local data, you can see a conductivity spike from the December 17 snow storm below. Conductivity is correlated to chloride in the water. This data comes from a continuous data logger from the Stroud Water Research Center located at Ethel Jordan Park. Notice how dramatically and rapidly the conductivity rises. This indicates a rise in chloride in the water as a result of salting for winter storms.
Monitoring Sites!
We are excited to highlight a few of our Streamkeeper sites. With 24 sites, we thought it would be interesting to go back and share information about some of our older sites.

Thank you, Streamkeepers who continue to monitor your sites!
TTF 300: This site is at the headwaters of Baeder Creek. Baeder Creek is one of the largest tributary creeks that enters the Tookany. This monitoring site is just downstream of a large buffer project. This year, a rain garden will be installed just upstream of this site. The creek along this section is characterized by larger rocks across much of the reach, and an abundance of algae. There's also a large abundance of planarians found here.
TTF 1150: This site is located along Leeches Run, a small tributary to the Tookany. This tributary flows through a largely residential area, just downstream from one of our residential backyard buffer projects. The creek at this site is only a few feet wide, and characterized by eroded banks and lots of shade overhead. This is the only monitoring site along Leeches Run -- it is extremely helpful to have eyes on this small tributary.
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