Student Concerns

After the students shared the information they had learned and the conclusions they had drawn from their own stream data and research, we tried to reach concensus on the overall health of the watershed. The following matrix was created to help summarize all of the student's thoughts about the streams they had monitored:

	Nine Mile Creek	Onondaga near source	Onondaga within the city	Ley Creek	Harbor Brook	Geddes Brook	Furnace Brook	Beartrap
How important is this stream to the Onondaga Lake Watershed?	45% of water , sources of contamination along it	Big stream, pure water,		Not very big 10% - 20%, but industrial waste	small creek	Not that large but part of the 9 mile system	small impact, small size, part of Onondaga Creek system	small
How is the land used around this stream?	Agricultural, roads, residential,	quarry farms forested	CSOs urban residential, carousel mall	85% urban and commercial (Carousel), residential	residential parks commercial areas wooded	residential parks	urban, commercial, parks, residential	ag and commercial, airport
What aspects stand out?	low phosphates, sensitive orgs,	sensitive organisms	channelized	picks up a lot of waste, high fc	normal bottom -> channelized concrete bottom	nitrates high macroinverts low (relationship?)	high fecal coliform and nitrates (from NPS?)	narrow buffer
How is the water quality in the stream?	excellent	good / excellent near source /	excellent to poor near the lake	fair to good	fair to good	fair to good		good
What was the habitat like at the sample site?	old mill, young forest	trees good canopy	rocky bottom and trash	commercial, highways, little vegetation	forested -> urban area	park , not that many animals	park

The students saw a large difference in water quality and land use in and outside of the city. They decided to evaluate the Onondaga Lake Watershed in both areas:

Outside the city:: Good to excellent for Nine Mile and Onondaga Creeks
Inside the city:: Fair to good