Course History

St. Anne’s Belfield School created a program in 2011 known as Environmental Statistics, a class with the goal being for senior high schoolers to study the health of local rivers. The students began by sampling the James River watershed, including Bull Pasture, Jackson, Rivanna, Maury, and Moormans Rivers. However, for such a large watershed, there was no conclusion found.

The next year, the class aimed to focus on the Rivanna watershed. They posed a question: Would seasons affect the parameters that were being measured? Throughout the year, they monitored Darden Towe Park and Riverview Park monthly, and as a result, they concluded that the time of the year did not affect the measured parameters with the exception of temperature— the rivers could be monitored at any time of the year without the season affecting the readings.

The following year, starting in 2013, the class decided to determine the health of the Rivanna watershed. 25 sites were randomly selected in the watershed, and at the end of the year, the conclusion was that the Rivanna River watershed was in satisfactory condition— however, there was still a concern for its health. In 2014, the class’s goal shifted to determine the health of the Moormans River and the Mechums River, with 10 sites randomly selected from each river. In conclusion, both rivers were healthy, but the Moormans River was slightly healthier.

The class began focusing on Rocky Creek starting 2016. Students visited other rivers, including some in West Virginia, as well as some around the greater Charlottesville/Albemarle area (including Piney Creek, Buck Mountain Creek, and Wards Creek). The main goal for 2016 was to locate mussels and ultimately determine their movement. Benthic invertebrates, E. Coli, phosphates, nitrates, flow-rate, temperature, conductivity, turbidity, DO, BOD, pH, and ammonium were measured at Buck Mountain and Wards Creek, and a few species of host minnows were captured and identified. The class used various methods of river gridding, including a standard rectangle-shaped grid, the pole method, and the stake method, eventually settling for the stake method. There was evidence of mussels found at Buck Mountain and Wards Creek, and the students spent most of the Fall searching for them— this was due to the fact that the mussels were on the surface and easier to find during this time. During the winter, the class spent most of its time gridding the river, clearing paths, plotting the river, and searching for new mussel sites. They set a future plan: to calculate variables such as density and distribution of the tagged mussels. This was the first year of a 4 year mussel tagging study, sponsored by Brian Watson of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

In 2018, the main focus remained on Rocky Creek. Using the grid method to locate mussels, the class located and tagged approximately 30 mussels to track their movement. The mussel count analysis of data lasted two days: the first 50 meters of the creek were surveyed the first day, and the last 50 meters were surveyed the second day. There were 7 Vico mussels spotted at Buck Mountain. The class searched Piney Creek and one other section of Buck Mountain, but no mussels were found. The pH level of Wards Creek was found to be high, while the benthic scores had been low. The students concluded that there may have been some runoff from the farm near Wards Creek that may have been affecting these levels. The class developed a program for identifying the mussel species by adding photographs of unidentified specimens to a database. The program would give suggested identification for that mussel by using percentages, and all photographs were sent to Brian Watson for positive identifications before the data was entered into the state database. As the year came to the close, the students as a whole compiled future suggestions, including to wait at least 20 seconds before gluing tags onto mussels, to have three separate teams when collecting mussel data, with 2 people in the river, 4 people in a tagging team, and 3 people recording locations. This was the second year of the 4-year mussel tagging study.