Brief Descriptions of Potential Stream Team Projects
Page 1
What Might a Stream Team Do?
Below are descriptions of a number of projects that a stream team might conduct at their local stream. The projects are organized into four areas: Education & Outreach, Monitoring, Survey, and Protection & Restoration.
The Maine Stream Team can provide training, assistance or resources for some of the activities. As the program continues to evolve, additional training and resources will become available.
Education & Outreach Projects
Create an Educational Flyer for Streamside Landowners: Get the word out with pamphlets, flyers, and posters about the proper way for landowners to manage their properties so they don't degrade nearby streams!
Design a Website: Learn how to design your own Internet website in order to let people around the state (and the world) know about what your stream team is doing.
Educate Yourself or Others About Streams: There is so much fun stuff to learn about streams. You could learn more about stream organisms (algae, macroinvertebrates, fish, etc.), habitat, chemistry, pollution, the hydrologic cycle, watersheds, streambank vegetation, and so on. The MSTP is developing resources that can bring you up to speed on a whole bunch of cool stuff that one can find in streams.
Networking Via a Website: Stay in touch with what's going on with stream-related issues and events in other parts of Maine by way of the MSTP website. Also find links to other Maine and national groups that are doing similar work. You can post your own events and success stories on this network-building tool! (Note: a newsletter summarizing MSTP and local stream events will be sent out to stream team members.)
Presentation of Your Data to a Local or Statewide Audience: Get the word out about what your stream team has been doing at a local meeting, at a statewide conference, or through a link to the Maine Stream Team Program website!
Storm Drain Stenciling: Remind your community members that streams are a connection between our neighborhoods and our local rivers, ponds, lakes, and ocean bays. Stormwater can carry trash, oil, animal waste, and toxic substances over the land and into storm drains. Sometimes homeowners pour excess motor oil or cleaners down curbside drains. These drains do not go to a treatment plant, but rather they drain into local streams and eventually into rivers, ponds, lakes, and esturaries. Send a message to your community through a Storm Drain Painting Activity. For example, you could stencil a message like "Don't Dump Waste-Drains to Stream" on neighborhood storm drains to make your community aware of their connection to local streams, via the storm drains.
Stream Advocacy: Organize meetings, speak out, or write letters to federal, state, and local policy-makers and officials to promote increased protection of your stream resources.
- Monitoring - Survey- Protection & Restoration-
