Watershed Watch Volunteer Spotlight: Marcia

Meet Marcia, who works as a reading specialist and lives in Providence! She is working on our partnership with URI's Watershed Watch. Marcia measures the chlorophyll, dissolved oxygen, and temperature of the water by the inflow to Roger Williams Park, adding to a multi-year dataset that helps researchers at URI and across the region assess long-term water quality and plan interventions and treatments to improve health and ecosystems across New England. Marcia sometimes brings her son Dustin along on sampling days to teach him about the science and enjoy the park. Marcia says she volunteers for Watershed Watch because “my family has benefited from this park for years, from the zoo to the planetarium to the gardens to sledding to bike riding to running, so I thought it was time that we gave back to the park.” She thinks water quality is an important issue “because it helps with the wildlife and with humans being able to enjoy the park.” Her favorite part of volunteering is “learning something new, as well as watching wildlife… sharing it with my family and being able to bring my kids while helping out in the park. We love this park!”

You don't need any experience to join the Watershed Watch - we have special trainings and support for anyone to learn these simple monitoring techniques that can make a big difference. In fact, Marcia didn’t study science in college, and says that even though she’s not experienced at all in chemistry, “with the help of Ryan [PSIC staff member], I was able to persevere and do this project!”

We take new volunteers every May - reach out to rkpopp@asri.org to get more info! If you want to get involved with the Stormwater Innovation Lab, citizen science, and keeping our water bodies safe this summer, make sure to make it to our Cyanobacteria Monitoring Workshop nights every other Tuesday, where we teach you all about sampling, identifying and fighting cyanobacteria algae blooms in Providence ponds. Event link: https://fb.me/e/1SqAOizOW