Science-curious citizens of the Spokane River area will have the opportunity to participate in an experiment this spring.
The Idaho Water Resources Research Institute, a research center associated with University of Idaho, plans to host a citizen science campaign examining water quality along the river. IWRRI Water Resources, Education and Outreach Program Manager Alycia Bean will oversee the campaign.
UI Area Water Educator Jim Ekins explained the history of heavy metal pollution in the river because of its proximity to the Silver Valley Mines. Ekins and IWRRI Director Alan Kolok said the goal of the citizen science campaign is to evaluate levels of heavy metals and nutrients in the water to better understand where problem areas are located.
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CitizenScience.gov defines citizen science as voluntary public participation in the scientific process. Citizen science campaigns occur when scientists encourage the general public to assist in their research by formulating questions, gathering data, conducting experiments and more.
“There are people that don’t believe what science is telling them. We’re living in a trust vacuum,” Kolok said. “I think you’re much more likely to believe something if you are one of the components of generating that data because you’re not going to say, ‘I don’t believe that I did it correctly.’ We believe that that’s a very important way that we can generate trust within the community.”
Kolok said since citizen science campaigns are best suited toward finding basic data over a large geographic range, this style of research fit the IWRRI research goal best. Kolok said he hopes future citizen campaigns will examine the entire Columbia River Basin.
Kolok said the Spokane River campaign will serve as a learning opportunity for the citizens who participate and will provide answers to questions about water quality to the community at large.
“You can define it (the community) in a number of different ways,” Kolok said. “Certainly the (government) agency people may have an interest in seeing the overall broad scale of what’s going on. High school students may be interested in that from the perspective of a learning tool… Homeowners that live on Lake Coeur d’Alene or live on the river, they have a vested interest in it. It really depends on who you are and what subset of the community you are. That influences the level of interest that you’re going to have in it.”
Ekins supports the campaign through his role as IDAH2O coordinator. IDAH2O Master Water Stewards provides a program that organizes opportunities for volunteer citizen scientists to collect water quality data for Idaho streams.
Ekins said he will encourage IDAH2O Master Water Stewards to participate in the IWRRI Spokane River campaign.
Kolok said anyone high school age and up is welcome to participate in the citizen science campaign.
Kolok said IWRRI is running other citizen science campaigns and internal research at this time as well. He mentioned a campaign in south Idaho examining nutrients in groundwater, research into how crayfish accumulate metals and tracking bacterial contamination. To keep up on IWRRI research and citizen science campaign opportunities, visit their website.
Lex Miller can be reached at [email protected]