Year 11 Senior Science, Earth and Environmental Science and Geography teacher professional learning. Registered BOSTES course.
“Checking the Pulse of the Hawkesbury River”
27th November 2015 @ Brewongle EEC.
Study Topics: Water for Living / Local Environment/Biophysical Interactions
Spend a day working with academics and technical staff from Western Sydney University and Brewongle on the Hawkesbury River. This excursion will focus on River Ecology and Management and provide you with enhanced expertise to teach the relevant syllabus areas of your subject.
We rely on water for all aspects of our lives. Often with hardly a thought we wash, drink, flush, swim, excrete and waste water. Do you know where your water comes from? How it got to the tap you just turned on? Where it goes after that loo flush, hot shower or car wash on the driveway? How does our water use influence the state of our rivers?
Students who visit us to study river ecology discover answers to these questions and many more as they “Check the Pulse of the Hawkesbury River”.
Yr 11 Science students from various schools have been donning their ecological stethoscopes here at Brewongle EEC for the last 6 years to test the health of the Hawkesbury River at Sackville. Thanks to the University of Western Sydney (UWS) Hawkesbury Campus, students have access to sophisticated river monitoring equipment and expertise.
This program is offered on six days throughout the year – it books up fast so please call us if you would like to involve your students. You can find more information on the program here.
It is a sensational classroom to have on a sunny day as students zoom down the Kent Reach in powerboats provided by the University to analyse some physical, chemical and biological aspects of river health.
Students who participate in this program undertake a series of assessments throughout the day to provide a river health report by the end of proceedings. We hope the real learning is to value and love our waterways. Having a first hand understanding of river health can only help these young people grow up to make good decisions for our natural resources and informed choices about how to manage water.
Tests undertaken on the day include measurements of width, depth, temperature, acidity, salinity, oxygen levels and turbidity. These physical and chemical parameters provide a snapshot of river health and students discover how to interpret this data and provide a diagnoses of any river problems they find.
Most of the treated sewage effluent from Western Sydney ends up in the river, sometimes accounting for about 60% of the flow. Students examine the effects of this effluent by sampling algae. Changes in algal numbers and diversity are an excellent biological indicator of river health and can show marked changes in the high nutrient environments that sewage effluent can create. Thanks to Galston High School for being our photograph subjects!
A multiprobe used to test various parametersMeasuring river width with a range finder.
A fashion highlight of the day includes the donning of waders to experience the joys of collecting algae as well as completing a comprehensive erosion assessment on a section of riverbank.
Upon returning to the lab, students magnify their algal samples and identify species to obtain a biodiversity assessment. Students then evaluate and synthesis their data to provide recommendations on how we can remediate and improve our waterways.
This valuable program would not be possible without the ongoing support of UWS and the UWS Office of Sustainability and we thank them for their ongoing commitment to school education and enrichment programs.
Feedback from Brett Clements – Cherrybrook Technology High School
Saw your post today about this excursion. This is one of my fav excursions for Yr 11.
Geology has never held that much interest for me in the past, but my nerdy brain fires up with interest when geology can be related to the living things on our planet. The year 12 students of Stella Maris College Manly who visited us for a two day camp program discovered some interesting relationships between our local soils, geology, vegetation and wildlife.
Being boffin earth and environmental scientists we conducted a soil profile using augers, identified local plant species, did a habitat assessment and tested soil parameters like pH, salinity, temperature, texture and type. Students discovered a highly altered riverbank setting with mostly introduced European trees, mown grass and deep alluvial topsoils. As we sampled further up the ridge we discovered shallower soils, a forest dominated by grey myrtle trees and much better habitat parameters. At the ridge top, soils were deeper and had some clay content with a new mix of grey gums, she oaks and stringybarks.
We were keen to monitor wikdlife too – so what is a good way to check up on local wildlife? Using our pool pole nest box cameras of course! Extend a pole up a tree with a Go Pro camera on the end – have an iPad at the bottom and voila! contents of box or nest can be viewed from the ground. A photobombing wonga pidgeon and a curious wallaby were the hightlights of our remoted cameras set up overnight. Check out the footage below.
Day two was spent in our fabulous outdoor classroom on the Hawkesbury River. UWS Hawkesbury Campus has had a partnership with Brewongle for many years to engage students in the ecology of the Hawkesbury River. With the use of speed boats from UWS and some pretty fancy testing equipment students put the river through its paces. They found a large diversity of algal species after some sweep netting in our fashionable waders as well as some reasonable healthy physical and chemical parameters. View the slide show below online.
Brewongle Environmental Education Centre 