The Health of our Streams

The Madison Watershed encompasses 1.64 million acres, all of which drains snowmelt and rainwater into a number of streams that lead into the Madison River. From Yellowstone National Park to the Tobacco Roots, and from the Madison Range to the Gravellies, every piece of the landscape makes an impression on our streams and rivers.  There is much more to water than just H2O molecules, and there is much more to streams than just water and fish. The challenge, however, is that we cannot see these other elements that entered the water from the surrounding landscape, but yet they are there.

This raises questions. What is in our streams and rivers? How do we know if they are healthy? The desire to answer these questions is what spawned the idea of the Madison Stream Team. In 2010, a group of local organizations and community members began this citizen-based water monitoring program to collect data on various streams and determine whether or not the streams were healthy.  Since then, this effort has received continued support, and has gained interest from a broad community base.

Volunteers in the Madison Stream Team undergo training in water quality collection methods, and are then assigned to various streams throughout the valley. In 2014, the stream team consisted of 17 volunteers who put in 270 hours collecting 3,960 data points on 7 streams. All of these data points tell us information about each stream, such as: streamflow; water temperature; amounts of oxygen in the stream; nutrient levels; presence of heavy metals; pH levels; and amounts of fine sediment. In general, these are things we can’t identify in the water just by visually observing the stream. However, by using electronic meters and collecting water samples for lab analysis, we can identify things that may be having an impact on stream health.

The information that the Madison Stream Team has collected over the past 5 years has been extensive enough to show how healthy these streams are with a high level of confidence. In fact, the information collected over the past three years has been used by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality to assist with their data collection efforts.

With this information, we have now been able to successfully answer that question of, “What is the condition of our streams?” This creates a transition in which we now are looking at how our community can utilize this information to understand current conditions and begin thinking about how we can make improvements in the future. After all, our waters are a shared and public resource. If there is something that the data is telling us about the health of our streams, it seems that we should use this as an opportunity to make improvements on the landscape that would ultimately improve our water resources.

There are many people in this valley interested in water: recreationalists, irrigators, fishers, ranchers, energy providers, and many more. Furthermore, the Madison Watershed is a large landscape filled with diverse land uses that all influence our streams. Therefore, these diverse interests and uses must be accounted for if we intend to make improvements on streams that benefit the community.

Fortunately, there is an opportunity for the community get involved, and to learn more about the condition of streams in the valley at the annual “State of the Water Presentation” on May 20^th at the Ennis Elementary cafeteria at 4 pm. If you are interested in learning about the health of our streams and want to know how the community might play a role in improving stream health in the coming years, we invite you to come to the event. Also, if you are interested in learning more about volunteering as a member with the Madison Stream Team, please contact the Madison Conservation District office.