How You Can be a Part of Chico USA

The Big Chico Creek Watershed Alliance (the Alliance) has recently established the Big Chico Creek Citizen Monitoring Program, and has been providing watershed education and training to citizen volunteers interested in participating in monitoring activities. Phase One began last year in the foothill zone of the watershed, funded by the Sierra Nevada Alliance. Phase Two has just recently been funded by CALFED and will expand the monitoring to include the mountain and valley zones of the watershed as well.

Citizens commit one morning a month from May to October and sample water quality chemistry and measure flows in Big Chico Creek. Twice a year, they sample aquatic insects in the stream bottom. The monitoring sites range from the Highway 32 crossing down to the mouth of Big Chico Creek. The Alliance provides training in methods that are specifically intended for citizen volunteers. Current volunteers include high school classes, university classes, families and individuals.

The information that is gathered takes a snapshot of creek health from the mountains to the River on one day each month. Over time, this information will be used to observe changes resulting from natural trends and human activities, including both land use changes and restoration projects. Timmarie Hamill, Citizen Monitoring Coordinator for the Alliance, says, “People enjoy not only getting out and enjoying the creek, but knowing that they are helping to track its condition and make sure that Big Chico Creek continues to stay healthy.”

One of the key parameters that are being measured is the temperature of pools where spring run salmon hold over the summer before spawning in the fall. Big Chico Creek’s spring run has been severely diminished, since the 1950s when a fish ladder was installed in Iron Canyon just upstream of Salmon Hole, to help the spring run navigate the basalt boulders in the stream channel during times of low flow. Numbers of fish have decreased from 1,000 in 1958 to 46 in 2003. The Iron Canyon fish ladder is currently in disrepair and doesn’t help the fish get to the cooler pools up on the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve, often leaving them trapped in Salmon Hole. The Alliance has installed temperature recording devices in Salmon Hole and four pools upstream of Iron Canyon to track high summer temperatures, which can cause disease in spring run salmon if they get too high. Volunteers also measure stream temperature at each monitoring site.

This article originally appeared in Summer/Fall 2005 Environmental News.