Can you believe we've already had 12 episodes
of Outside Science Inside Parks? This has been an
incredible way to celebrate 100 years
of the National Park Service!
And to wrap up this Centennial year, we paddled the canyons
of the Green River to see how scientists are keeping an eye
on this special place.
Check it out:
The conservationist John Muir once said
"How little note is taken of the deeds of nature.
What paper publishes her reports,
who records the sheet music of the wind
and the water written in river lines".
This is Dinosaur National Monument,
right on the border of Utah & Colorado.
This is our laboratory, this is our office,
this is our daily commute, floating down the river.
It's awesome to be out here.
It's one of the best experiences you can have
of being in a place.
I love, you know, sleeping under the stars.
Being on these rivers is amazing.
I think it's also really great to go down the river.
You know, we're on an eight day trip and over eight days
if you were just in the office you might not get
to know your compatriots as much.
I mean the park for us is a living laboratory, we can figure
out what if anything we're doing to change the ways of nature
and the way that geomorphology and hydrology work in rivers.
We are coming down to our first rapid, called Winnie's rapid.
And right after that we're going over to the side
and we have our first long term monitoring site.
The first thing we do at each
of our sites is walk the whole thing and write
down every single plant species we can find.
So we're surveying the topography of the site here.
The veg crew is taking vegetation samples
on their plots, and then we're wanting
to have a 3D map of this entire area.
By doing these surveys repetitively every year we can
see compare that and see whats happening over time
as it relates to the water releases that come
out of the dam Drill sound We just drilled in all these bolts,
put our transducer in against this rock here, the pressure
of the water on top of it gives us some good readings,
so with that and calculations we can figure
out how much water is flowing by.
Rivers are dynamic, we've got a dam just upriver.
Dams drop out all the sediment.
We're concerned with what kind of sediment's moving
through the rivers, how that sediment is deposited,
how that deposited sediment is stabilized by vegetation and how
that narrows a river corridor and changes the dynamic
of these environments.
Hopefully the data we're collecting will be able
to pick up those changes.
You know we'll be able
to monitor the health of places like this.
And so it did eat away at this island.
Uh huh. So last year it was there
and now you can see it shifted down a little bit.
And I think the other thing is it just brings the science
and it's meaning all to the forefront, right?
You're not just crunching numbers but you're out here
and you're seeing the changes in the river ecosystem and thinking
about how those changes would continue on into the future
by standing on the land that it truly affects.
It's an amazing place to wake up to,
it's an amazing place to work on.
I love being on the river, I love being outside,
that's why I chose to get into this field.
I can't really think of a better place to be, conducting science
for the National Park Service Inventory & Monitoring Program.
To be out here experiencing the river, not only during the day
when you're collecting data but also at night.
You're at camp, you're camping right along the edge
of the river, you hear the river and rapids all night.
So to be totally immersed
in the environment you're studying is pretty special.
And it's amazing that I can do something that I love,
doing the science and trying to protect these ecosystems,
and still live out here in such a, such an amazing place.
You know it's more than just the plants, the sediment,
the geomorphology that we look at.
It's the wildlife, it's really inspiring.
It's a reminder how important these landscapes really are.
For me, it's really whether I pick up a piece of trash
or do some long term monitoring,
I feel like I'm really helping my little corner of the world,
helping clean up and improve my home.
And I hope that just
about everybody can find a little chunk of the world
to help protect, and get outside and enjoy it at the same time.
Thanks for joining us in 2016 - it's been an amazing adventure!
Remember, you can always visit nps dot gov,
forward slash nature to find any videos you might have missed
throughout the year.
Tune in next month when we'll post our favorite clips
from 2016 and give a preview
of upcoming new episodes about park science.