#SummerScienceFriday | New Season of #LARWMP and #SummerScienceFridays!
Inspired by the need to educate and engage Angelenos about their watersheds, our #SummerScienceFriday blog series coincides with the duration of our monitoring season. Every year from Memorial Day to Labor Day, sections of the LA River open for the recreational season. This is when CWH and the rest of the Los Angeles River Watershed Monitoring Program (LARWMP) team start our monitoring season, collecting water samples to ensure the health and safety of our waterways for visitors to enjoy it. This year marks the thirteenth monitoring season for CWH and the fourth year of our community engagement initiative, #SummerScienceFridays!
This season is a little different, and CWH recognizes the need to not only keep safe and healthy as usual when recreating in our waterways, but also exercise caution and practice social-distancing during a public health crisis. We ask that you find ways to get outside this summer while also following CDC guidelines and social distancing recommendations. We hope you will follow us this summer as we work to connect communities and students with their watershed and provide the resources that empower them to be better watershed stewards, as important now as ever.
The Los Angeles River Watershed Monitoring Program (LARWMP)
Keep Up With Your Water Quality
Following the monitoring season, we report the results in our annual LARWMP report (View our LARWMP Reports). To keep up with the latest information on water quality status during our monitoring season, we encourage all to visit LA Sanitation & Environment’s (LASAN) webpage, Los Angeles River Quality. Here, LASAN posts water safety information and whether sites are open, closed due to high bacteria levels, or when visitors should use caution when interacting with the water.
#SummerScienceFridays Update
We are excited to continue our Watershed Connections partnership with Southern California Edison (SCE) this summer! Through informative blog posts and a diverse range of topics, we strive to use our #SummerScienceFridays series to connect the LA community to their waterways and to guide them toward watershed stewardship.
While our blogs will continue to explore science topics, the water-energy nexus, sustainable landscapes, and other pertinent watershed topics; we are thrilled to announce that, this summer, blogs will also be written with classroom and community education applications in mind! Through our outreach efforts and interactive Watershed Connections Activities, we have connected with educators who challenged us to take our lessons into the classroom. Although we are not able to undertake curriculum design at the moment, we saw the opportunity for our blogs to become a resource to support teachers and communities. We are happy to provide an online engagement tool to support those interested in watershed and sustainability lessons, especially as educators navigate the challenges associated with COVID-19 and remote instruction. At a time when outdoor spaces are even more treasured to us, whether that means your neighborhood park, your yard, or in a national forest, it is our hope that these blogs will guide our readers outdoors, to make environmental learning and watershed connections a little easier!
What to Expect
Our usual blog-style writing and science-based topics plus ideas for STEAM classroom activities, educational webinars, and a suggestion for how the topic and lesson may align with classroom standards. Stay tuned!
To keep up with #SummerScienceFriday posts check our blog every Friday afternoon and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!
Facebook- @CouncilforWatershedHealth
Twitter- @CWH.org
To view our testing sites and LARWMP’s most recent findings, visit our Los Angeles River Watershed Monitoring Program webpage.
We’d love to hear from you! Use this online form to reach our Science Team with a question or to share a #SummerScienceFridays topic of interest.
Many thanks to our #SummerScienceFriday partner for making this #SummerScienceFriday season possible!
