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Rock Pack Workshop
August 17, 2018, 9:30 am to 3:30 pm
Where: Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana
Audience: Elementary, middle, and high school teachers, environmental educators, and interested citizens.
Cost: FREE!
Spaces are limited! Register by August 13. Contact Tara Muenz from Stroud Water Research Center for more information or to register, tmuenz@stroudcenter.org, 610-268-2153, ext. 301.
How Can Packs of Rocks Spark Stream Exploration?
Hands-on experience! Touch slimy rocks and crawling freshwater macroinvertebrates, learning how they and sediments tell the story of stream health.
The Rock Pack Experiment is a fun, hands-on research tool for all students and citizens of all ages, demonstrating the interconnectedness between our actions on land and life in streams. Rock Pack promotes interdisciplinary watershed education by allowing students to conduct and design their own experiments and apply their knowledge to protect local watersheds.
Join us at our workshop and we’ll show you how!
Spend part of the day with us on Montana State University’s campus exploring Wally Byam Grove and learning how to place and remove rock packs!
During this workshop, participants will receive an overview of stream ecology, geomorphology, and animals as ecosystem engineers. Getting our boots in the water, we’ll examine and identify aquatic macroinvertebrates that live within rock packs from a local stream. We’ll also give you great tools, teaching activities, and ideas to incorporate the workshop content into your own indoor or outdoor classroom, programs, or monitoring initiatives!
At the workshop you will receive:
- Rock Pack kit give-aways!
- Lunch
- Tour of MSU’s ecology labs
- Hands-on experience deploying rock packs in a stream
- Training in macroinvertebrate identification
- Fun teaching techniques to use in your classroom and community
- One-on-one with the experts!
- Continuing education credits (for a fee)
Did You Know?
Hydropsychid caddisflies (Trichoptera) are a group of globally distributed aquatic insects that spin silk mesh nets that they use to filter feed. These silk mesh nets are important ecosystem engineering structures in flowing waters that can regulate sediment erosion, food particle delivery by altering near-bed current velocities, and enhance habitat availability for other macroinvertebrates.* Look for them in your rock packs!
A short film has been produced to take a closer look at caddisflies and their ecosystem engineering. This film is based upon work by Lindsey Albertson, Ph.D. (Montana State University) and Melinda Daniels (Stroud Water Research Center) supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1557032. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
