Purpose

River monitoring has had a long and distinguished history with Alberta educators. The Alberta RiverWatch Science Program has made four significant contributions to further enhance these efforts:

Otherwise costly lab equipment is made available to participating schools
Experienced river guides provide assistance during a field trip
The rafting adventure involves each student as an active learner
The web site ensures that collected data is preserved and shared

The RiverWatch Science Program helps students answer the "big" question," How healthy is your river?" In order to answer that question, students must first learn ecosystem concepts, lab skills and critical analysis. Our students use science as a tool in the construction of shared knowledge.

The central focus of a day with RiverWatch is the taking of water quality measurements above and below a point source of pollution such as a wastewater treatment plant. (We take our students to all the best places!)

How healthy is your river?

Students from many different schools collect physics, chemistry and biology data during fifty days of field research each year. The data collection has been done over many years and along the length of various rivers. The end result is a picture of overall river health and human impact in Alberta.

Students have easy access to an on-line database and they are encouraged to critique water quality, judge environmental health and address personal actions that affect water quality. As more and more students investigate their rivers first-hand, we hope they'll be motivated to protect and manage water quality for the benefit of wildlife, safe drinking water and recreation.