MONITORING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE UPPER KALAMAZOO WATERSHED, MI: UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH IN A LOCAL NATURAL LABORATORY

For more than 10 years, Albion College students and faculty have been engaged in monitoring and research of the Upper Kalamazoo Watershed in Calhoun and Jackson Counties, MI. Our initial studies were a response to citizen concerns about piping of effluent from a local village’s sewage lagoons directly into Rice Creek, a tributary of the upper Kalamazoo River. The research evolved into a multi-faceted watershed monitoring project supported in part by an EPA section 319 grant through the local conservation district. More recent studies have focused on diel cycling of multiple water quality parameters and the interaction between the stream system and groundwater systems in riparian zone wetlands. Detailed studies have largely been faculty-mentored, student-centered projects and have included individualized directed studies during the academic year and college-sponsored, 10-week summer research experiences.

The Upper Kalamazoo Watershed provides an ideal natural laboratory for undergraduate research. Stream reaches include 5^th to 1^st order tributaries of the Kalamazoo River, draining an 1163 km², mostly rural watershed. The watershed includes reaches that appear “natural” and others that have been intensely altered by dredging and straightening, as well as multiple in-stream dams that have altered the gradient.

Some of the basic findings of our research are novel and important in terms of watershed processes and management. Students discovered and carefully documented diel turbidity cycles and hypothesized that the turbidity cycles were driven by a biological wetlands pump that intercepted groundwater for plant use during daytime hours. Much student work continues to focus on testing this hypothesis. Other students’ work suggests that nitrate levels in the river result primarily from a series of springs with quite high nitrate levels, while the bulk of the river water derives from distributed base flow with much lower nitrate concentrations. Future work includes building a foundational GIS database for the Upper Kalamazoo Watershed which will put in place a much needed overarching structure for the local watershed research.