STREAM SURVEY

• Position: Stream Survey Technician
• Employer: Great Basin Institute
• Location: Elko, NV
• Time: May 2021 – December 2021

Coming out of college having spent the previous year and a half working on school at home due to Covid, I really needed a break from working at a desk and it felt like a great time to move somewhere new. (No furniture, no partner, no problems!) I took a job working on a seasonal stream survey crew for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), packed my car, and moved out to Nevada–a state I’d never even set foot in before. The work we did monitored habitat for the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout which is federally listed as a threatened species and is also the state fish of Nevada.

We collected data using two different protocols:

• Multiple Indicator Monitoring (MIM) — A protocol developed by the BLM to monitor the condition of stream banks and document trends. MIM focuses on the vegetation closest to the stream channel because that’s what provides bank stability during a flood event.
• Level III Stream Survey — This protocol was specific to Elko District. At each monitoring site we set up 5 equally spaced transects and measured things including stream channel dimensions, bank cover and stability, and sediment classification. (Level III means the monitoring protocol was designed to answer specific research questions.)

It was really neat being able to visit hundreds of similar yet slightly different sites and make observations about how factors such as slope, soil, and cattle grazing influence stream conditions. It was also super cool how many things we saw just by being outdoors every day. A tiny snake swallowing a tiny fish, an owl that took a few seconds to realize we were sitting a few feet away from the branch it landed on, a parasitic wasp dragging a paralyzed beetle back to its home, water bugs fighting over a snack. (Note: I’d argue all these things happen in urban areas too, you just have to slow down and pay attention!)