Our Projects

The Foster Creek Conservation District currently implements several on the ground projects. Among those projects are monthly stream monitoring, the Nordby headcut project, and biological noxious weed control.

Below is a clickable map of the projects in Douglas County.
Please click on the boxes or points to access the information page on that project.

The stream monitoring consists of several or all of the following tasks: water sampling, hydrolab monitoring, flow monitoring, and water temperature. In addition, benthic macroinvertebrate samples were collected in 2001 or 2002 at the monitoring locations.

When you click a stream monitoring location on the above map, it will list which specific tasks are monitored at that location. Below are the descriptions of each task:

Water sampling - Samples of the stream water are taken and sent to a local lab for testing. The water is tested for fecal coliform, nitrate + nitrite (No2 + No3), total phosphorous, and TKN nitrogen.

Hydrolab monitoring - A Quanta Hydrolab system is used to measure the water temperature, Ph, specific conductivity, salinity, Do % saturation, Do mg/L, and turbidity.

* This is our Quanta Hydrolab. The blue piece with the display screen is the handheld part where we read the output and records data. The black piece holds the monitoring probes.

Flow monitoring - Uses a pressure sensing transponder connected to a data logger, which records the level of the stream every fifteen minutes.

*This is a picture of the data logger. It's installed at most of the stream sites. To download data we take along a palm top handheld computer, and connect it to this data logger. Using the software on the palm top we can then download all of the data. We usually do this monthly.

Water temperature- Water temperature is taken every 30 minutes using an installed temperature gauge, which records and stores the information to be downloaded onto a laptop computer at six month intervals.