Texas Stream Team calls for paddlers to help conduct citizen science

Posted by Jayme Blaschke
University News Service
February 11, 2014

The Meadows Center for Water & the Environment at Texas State University is inviting kayakers and canoeists to join the Texas Stream Team, a citizen science program that has been monitoring the quality of Texas waterways since 1991.

A newly launched "Texas Stream Team Paddlers" project is expanding opportunities for students, educators, outdoor enthusiasts and all manner of paddlers to work on one of the most important issues of the times: Water.

“No natural resource has greater significance for the future of Texas than water,” said Andrew Sansom, executive director of The Meadows Center for Water & the Environment.

The citizen scientists who complete the Texas Stream Team Paddlers training will learn to be stewards of Texas water resources. Their observations and data will support conservation efforts and academic research and will contribute to a de facto early warning system to alert water management organizations of spills or other threats.

Texas Stream Team Paddlers will collect data from new or hard-to-reach locales. And, in doing so, they will join a team of nearly 8,000 citizen scientists who, since 1991, have volunteered some 45,000 hours of their time--service valued at more than a $1 million--to protect the future of Texas.

Texas Stream Team is part of The Meadows Center for Water & the Environment. The Meadows Center for Water & the Environment was so named following a $1 million gift from The Meadows Foundation in August 2012. The work of the Texas Stream Team is carried out in cooperation with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

To learn how to get involved, contact Travis Tidwell at (512) 245-9148 or via email at txstreamteam@txstate.edu.