Group Projects from the 2015 Indiana Watershed Leadership Academy
Academy participants work together to develop a project that contributes to the watershed community in Indiana. These projects have the potential to be used by others and advance watershed management in Indiana.
Note: These projects were selected and created by the participants, and are not a product of Purdue University. For more information, please contact the authors listed.
Project Title: A Public Friendly Approach to Sharing Water Quality Data Zach Dripps and Jeremy Reiman
Our objective was to make our water monitoring data available to the public in an informational and simple manner. We incorporated geographic information systems and databases to produce an interactive, online web-map that displays our water monitoring sites, site information, and our water quality data.
Project Title: Best Management Practices for Residential Areas Jake Brinkman, Aileen Driscoll-Farid, and Jennifer Hughes
We created a brochure that explains some common best management practices for residential areas. This includes information about how these practices benefit water quality in a watershed as well as online resources where landowners can learn more about BMPs. Group members will also make the brochures available to the public in their workplace and/or watershed group.
Project Title: Managing Your Small Woodland: Energizing Your Woodland Investment Phil Cox and Larry Owen
Our objective was to advocate for woodland owners to have incentives for managing and maintaining their woodlands as an important land cover to protect water quality. We have provided reasons and resources on why and how to manage woodlands according to owner’s goals, for example, keep property tax low, control invasive species, woodland weeding, careful harvesting, management plan, converting ag land to trees.
Project Title: Lost Gems of Indiana Ross Carlson, Zach Lee and Staci Orr
We developed a Powerpoint of the history of Indiana rivers and their use (working rivers and transport industry), species loss (mussels and fish), and hydrologic modification (legacy of dams and ditches).
Project Title: Konnect 4 Water Quality: A Game Changer Kristen Clason and Trisha McClain
A game focused on best management practices in rural and urban areas. We created a life-size connect-four board where the chips are 4 urban BMPs and 4 rural BMPs. We are planning to develop a manual to instruct others on constructing the game board.
Konnect 4 Water Quality: Assembly Manual
Project Title: Surface Water and Groundwater Modeling Tools for Watershed Planning and Planning for Climate Change Impacts Tammy Patterson and Kelsey Thetonia
We developed an introduction to surface water-groundwater tools that have been developed to assess climate change, climate change projections and indicators plus resources for watershed planners/leaders to track climate change impacts. We also developed a watershed pamphlet for informing climate change to the public.
Project Title: BMP Maintenance Guide Andi Hodaj and Allison Turner
We selected 2-3 Agricultural and 2-3 Urban Best Management Practices and created guides to maintaining their BMP and solving common problems with their BMP. We hope to make this guide available for watershed and Extension groups to hand out and/or display on their Web pages.
Project Title: Locating Landowners and Operators in a Watershed Jon Charlesworth and Leslie Davisson
We developed a Powerpoint presentation providing
guidance for how to identify and engage landowners as well as the producers within a particular subwatershed. We will discuss how to access your county’s GIS information and where to access watershed boundary shapefiles. We will also go over the basics on using ArcMap and alternative mapping programs.
Project Title: Wetland Creation – Why and How Caleb Asbury and Char Ison
We will be discussing why wetlands are important including what a wetland is, types of wetlands, and reasons for creating them. We will also be discussing how to create a wetland including permitting required for certain types of wetland impacts.
Project Title: Water Quality Predictors for Indiana Reservoirs Morgan Bennett, Carol Newhouse, and Kelsey Owens
We compiled a catalog of the largest riverine impoundments in Indiana, especially those used as drinking water supplies. We researched and compiled available maps and data, ran watershed statistics, and compiled pertinent water quality information for each; in order to predict possible impacts for future impoundments/reservoirs in Indiana.
Project Title: IWLA Alumni Annual Field Day Amy Silva and Betsy Yankowiak
We developed an IWLA Alumni Field Day, scheduled for July 11, 2015 at Eagle Marsh. We also created a template for IWLA Alumni field days for advanced training to be implemented annually at different sites in state by various IWLA alumni.
Project Title: Water Quality Basics Ali Meils and Phil Odenkirk
We developed a summary table and reference cards to be used as a guide for laypeople to understand some of the most important factors affecting water quality.
Project Title: Water Resources for Interested Citizens Gina Anderson and Jessica Hoehn
We compiled a few common watershed resources and included step-by-step instructions for a few of those resources.
Project Title: Key Elements for Subwatershed Management Planning in Urban Areas Brenda Scott Henry
This presentation will provide an overview of the presenter's quest to incorporate watershed management planning into community planning efforts by identifying key elements of a neighborhood plan for water quality and BMPs in an urban setting.
If you have questions or comments, please contact Laura Esman, Purdue University.
Indiana Watershed Leadership is a program of Purdue University and the Extension
Water Quality Program. Support is provided through a 319 Clean Water Act grant
from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
