Happy Earth Day everyone! Each year, on the 22nd of April the world takes a moment to stop, reflect, and appreciate this place we are so lucky to call home. Maybe you spent time in the outdoors, in an urban park or maybe adventuring throughout the beautiful mountains, or maybe reminisced on old outdoor excursions through looking at old photos. Either way, it is important that on days like today, you not only enjoy this place we call home, but also take time to reflect and think about your own relationship with nature and the world around us. That's why at the Greenway Foundation, on this earth day, we are encouraging a deeper dive into what does it really mean to call this planet home? And what does it really mean to celebrate Earth?
In a wake of daunting environmental issues and potential climate anxiety - it is hard to think about what the cascading impact of individual action is. And as a bustling society here in the United States, we forget that we can have individual relationships with nature that are important to explore. It is easy to feel far away from it at times, or maybe pushed a side. It can be easy to forget that we are nature, and that it is good to care about the world and believe in change, even when there are a lot of variables out of most individuals control. But at the Greenway Foundation, we have always believed in the power of community, the power of the integration of natural and urban settings, and the power of curiosity. That is why we can't stop talking about Denver parks, because it shows that nature is never too far! Our SPREE programs works to evoke curiosity in children about the world around them - and we do this because we know that individual certainly can make a large difference. As this earth day comes to a close and the sun starts to set, maybe pull out a journal and take some moments to reflect on your own relationship with nature, and maybe why we are lucky to have our Earth, this place we call home.
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Tuesday was quite the exciting day for The Greenway Foundation since we finally got to hear from the teams that participated in this year's Clean Water Challenge. Each year the Greenway Foundation and other partners/sponsors challenges undergraduate students to engineer a proposed solutions to an issue impacting Colorado waterways. This year, we got to hear from two teams of seniors from the Colorado School of Mines who gave presentations about their proposed solutions to this years challenge; how to reduce pollutants from Colorado waterways. Reducing E.coli levels in Cherry Creek - Team "Water" You Doing?
of E.coli frequently exceeds the state recreational standard of 126 CFU/100mL. When levels exceed this standard, waterways are no longer safe for recreational use for humans, pets, and other animals. Their design was a combined media filtration and UV system set to reduce E.coli levels to less than the state recreational standard. As shown above, the system this team designed is a passive treatment system that utilizes pre-existing infrastructure that would house the entire system. Scattered throughout the Cherry Creek River is these lock structures that adds infrastructure to be used as retaining walls for the system. Their design utilizes physical vertical filtration methods by running water through a granular media. For their testing, '"Water" you doing?' used sand as their media of choice - but there is still further testing to be done to determine ideal media for system. Water enters the system through openings at top of lock structure. As the water percolates vertically through the media filtration system it will eventually reach the secondary part of the system which treats the contaminated water with a UV light, and then the water can exit the system into the greater Cherry Creek/Confluence Park area. Through testing the system with the Quanti-Tray system for measurements and four different trial groups, all containing greater than the state recreational standard for E.coli, this group found their system to be effective at removing E.coli from waterways to objective standard. In general, they found that most of the removal of E.coli occurred at the UV treatment stage; however, with lower flow rates, that granular sand media is able to remove more E.coli from the sample. While the results from the testing are quite promising and exciting, to make this project fully feasible, the group suggested doing further testing on different types of media and UV system, develop systems for backwashing media and for instances of high flow rates. However, we thought their re-use of pre-existing infrastructure to house their system and using low impact passive water treatments to be very innovative! Mitigating Nutrient Pollution in Sloan's Lake - Team N&P The second team we got to here from was team "N&P", who decided to focus their solution on mitigating Nitrogen and Phosphorous levels in Sloan's Lake in Denver. This group wanted to focus on this issue/location because Sloan's like is an important ecological system for Denver waterways, heavily used for recreation, and frequently experiences eutrophication events, and even at times has to be closed due to dangerous levels of excessive nutrients in the system. Eutrophication and nutrient pollution are very dynamic and complex issues that are happening too frequently in bodies of water all over the world, because of this they can be quite daunting to try to solve.
water column. So Team N&P designed a paddle wheel device, that will travel across the surface of Sloan's lake, using paddles on either side to provide that aeration or mixing to de-stratify Sloan's Lake and make it safe for recreational use year-round. The device, as shown below, would also be connected to SMART software technology that would allow the wheel to self-navigate and connect to docking stations located in low-populated areas around the lake. One of the most interesting and exciting things about this proposed solution is that is utilizes solar panels to charge and power the device to function throughout the lake. The group also suggested that their paddle device is scalable and transferable to other lakes throughout Colorado making it have the potential to be useful in other lakes, other than just Sloan's Lake. Voting Results! It was so exciting to hear about these innovative and interesting solutions to dealing with pollution in our waterways! However, only one team could win this years challenge. This year's clean water challenge was a little different since we left the voting up to the audience! The audience voted on two things, their favorite solution, and the solution that would have the greatest impact on Colorado waterways. The winner of audience favorite; Team N&P with their paddle wheel device to mitigate nutrient pollution in Sloan's Lake! Finally, the winner of project to have the greatest impact on Colorado waterways; Team "'Water' you doing?" with their combined filtration and UV system to remove E.coli from Confluence park! Glad everyone was able to experience a victory this challenge, and we will see you next year!
Beavers are one of the things we talk a lot about in our SPREE programs, and they are awesome because they are ecosystem engineers, in that they significantly alter their environments and greater landscapes, which greatly impacts other species who rely on quality wetlands environments for survival. and beaver lodges, so beavers are extremely important for the productivity and quality of wetland ecosystems. By reshaping their physical environment, beavers impact resource availability within ecosystems for other species, making them a keystone species. Depending on where beavers decide to build their dams/lodges will determine and define the greater wetland ecosystem. This is because these structures can change the flow of available nutrients for other species, which can have both positive and negative ecological impacts, but overall the presence of beavers is a happy sign for wetlands! However, like anything with nature, it is all a balancing act. While beavers are incredibly important animals, this does not mean they don’t cause conflict when it comes to humans. Furthermore, beavers being a Keystone species means that deviations in beaver populations have cascading ecological impacts on other species within that wetland ecosystem. In Colorado currently, Beaver populations are very abundant and starting to have adverse effects on the relationship between urban settings and beaver ecological function. In dealing with the relationship between humans and beavers, it is important to strive for a symbiotic relationship that utilizes adaptive and proactive approaches to dealing with beaver urban destruction. Approaches like putting up barriers, using sand paint, or other natural repellents to make it so unideal situations can be avoided between beavers and humans is an approach I know Chompers would appreciate!. This national beaver day be sure to take a moment to appreciate these wonderful creatures, and keep your eyes peeled in the parks along the South Platte River for Chompers and his other fun friends!
Also don't forget the month of April is all about giving SPREE! Help us educate more Denver Kids about cool creatures like beavers by donating here or look out for opportunities to volunteer at one of our upcoming events! Each day this week campers explored new fields of science and how they relate to our South Platte River through experiments, lessons, crafts, games, and so much more.
On Monday we were all introduced to Chompers and his SPREE Force. His right-clawed-man Crusher helped teach us about Hydrology, the study of water! We learned about what happens to our environment when it rains, and got to go critter crawling in the South Platte River where the precipitation ends up. At the end of the day we all worked together to defeat the Trash Monster by picking up trash in our game Storm Drain Tag! On Tuesday, although rainy, we still got to get in some ROCKING Geology crafts. With the help of Roxy the Raccoon and Earth Dude, some more of Chomper's friends, we learned about the importance of some rocks in the history of Colorado. We found, named, and painted our rock best friends then had bunches of fun in our free time when it wasn’t raining. On Wednesday, with our head in the clouds we all learned about flying animals and the study of weather. Our Meteorology and Ornithology experts then headed to critter crawl to identify any clouds, birds, or other critters we could find. After a quick snowstorm in the morning campers were all able to identify the clouds then warm up and play outside all afternoon. On Thursday, this Field Day we became Biologists and leveled up our knowledge of mountain lions, eagles, t-rexs, bats, bears, and beavers to name a few. All together the campers were able to stretch out to the height of a T-Rex! And by the afternoon we caught a record number of crawdads for the week. On Friday, for our last day of camp we called on H2O Joe and his fish friend Flo to help us become Botanists. We created plant seed bombs to help more of Colorado’s native plants take root as well as guides to identify them. Then, on our nature hike we were then able to use the guides to identify some plants that already live in Johnson Habitat Park. Lastly, at graduation we all came together to talk about what an awesome week of camp we had and recap all the scientists that we can become. For the month of April, the Greenway Foundation is launching a fundraising campaign for our SPREE programs. SPREE brings thousands of children to the South Platte River every year to create unique experiences in our urban outdoor areas and teach environmentally focused topics. By utilizing nature as a teacher, we can create positive connections between children and natural spaces, experience new things outside (like holding crayfish), and have lots of fun while doing it!
However, in order to ensure that cost isn't a barrier and to make our programs more accessible to all we are asking help from our community this April! GivingSPREE is all about supporting SPREE programs so we can teach more and more children about the beautiful and important South Platte River! If you're interested in donating, check out these slides below that breakdown what your donation will do for SPREE programs as well as some gifts you'll receive from us for your generous donation! Unlisted above, donations of $350 can provide full scholarship to a child for a week at summer camp! If you'd like to donate, click the link here or check our website. The donation minimum is $5, but if you are unable to financially donate, look out for opportunities to volunteer with us! And let the givingSPREE commence!
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