Students in Action Water Quality Monitoring

Located in Missoula County, Morrell Creek is a tributary of the Clearwater River. The creek runs for 18 miles from the Swan Mountains to the confluence with the Clearwater River. Both Bull trout and Westslope Cutthroat trout are found in this creek. Protecting the habitat of these two native species is of utmost importance for conservation and recreation.

Monitoring has been conducted on the Seeley- Swan high school sampling site on Morrell Creek for 11 years. Continuing this monitoring will provide another year of consecutive data to understand how population growth and development in the Clearwater basin is impacting the water quality.

Monitoring at this location will also provide Seeley-Swan high school students the opportunity to get hands-on experiences with water quality monitoring. During the school year, Gretchen Watkins and her Earth and Space Science class will conduct the monitoring. In the summer months, the Clearwater Resource Council partners with the high school and has volunteer interns help collect the data. The Big Sky Watershed Corps member serving with the CRC will help to train, provide oversight, and support the highschool volunteers during the summer months. Monitoring by SIA helps to bring the community together by providing opportunities for youth to get involved in the scientific process.

The group will monitor once a week from late April to June, biweekly in July, and once a month from September- to November. Nutrients (Total Nitrogen, Total Phosphorus, Soluble Reactive Phosphorus, Nitrite, and Nitrate), Total Suspended Solids, Turbidity, Discharge, and Stage measurements will be taken at the site. The CRC has sites along Morrell Creek near HWY 83 and Morrel Falls. Having the SSHS monitoring site will help to compare water quality at the other locations upstream and downstream.

Seeley Lake is a popular community for tourism throughout the year. Highway 200 is filled with beautiful natural sights and recreational opportunities. More visitors and permanent residents have both positive and negative impacts on the community. Residents and non residents alike are concerned with septic leachate from development and population changes.

Septic Leachate causes an increase in nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus which cause algal blooms and decreases dissolved oxygen in waters. Leaching from septic systems may also contaminate water sources with nitrates, pathogens that cause disease, and pharmaceutical compounds (FBC 2019). By monitoring nutrients at multiple site on Morrell Creek, SIA can see how development on the creek impacts the water quality.

More information on Students in Action:

 Students In Action Stream Monitoring in Morrell Creek — Clearwater Resource Council (crcmt.org) 

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