Interns Uncover the Secrets of Streams

The Ashokan Water­shed Stream Man­age­ment Pro­gram (AWSMP) wel­comes a new crew of Water­shed Con­ser­va­tion Corps (WCC) interns this sum­mer to the water­shed. WCC mem­ber Aman­da Caban­il­las, who is a pho­tog­ra­ph­er in addi­tion to major­ing in geol­o­gy at SUNY New Paltz, took this pic­ture of a dam­selfly emerg­ing in Broad­street Hol­low Creek where the interns trained last week.

Dam­selfly, Broad­street Hol­low, June 2016. Pho­to by A. Cabanillas

Aman­da’s first intern­ship with the WCC was in 2013 and this is her third field sea­son work­ing Catskill streams. Aman­da says, “I love it! I’m learn­ing so much about stream sci­ence and geo­mor­phol­o­gy, and it’s real­ly shaped what I want to focus on as I con­tin­ue pur­su­ing my aca­d­e­m­ic goals.”

WCC interns will assist AWSMP with in-depth assess­ment of stream chan­nels at mon­i­tor­ing sites this sum­mer. But while they’re stretch­ing tape across streams, sur­vey crews often encounter inter­est­ing wildlife like aquat­ic insects, but­ter­flies, birds, snakes, fawns and the occa­sion­al fish­er or bear. Not a bad sum­mer job!

Adult dam­selfly emer­gence from their aquat­ic lar­val stage. Pho­to by A. Cabanillas

The WCC is fund­ed by the NYC Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion in part­ner­ship with Ulster Coun­ty Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege (UCCC). The pro­gram employs stu­dents with nat­ur­al resource or sci­ence back­grounds to join Catskill stream sur­vey teams that work with local stream man­age­ment pro­grams like the AWSMP.