Education & Conservation

Watershed education teaches conservation, restoration

Oregon Sea Grant's watershed education efforts aren't confined to the coast. They reach far inland through a network of Extension educators and specialists who work with community groups and individuals to protect and improve critical water resources.

Their efforts have focussed on three broad areas:

Linking land use, water and watersheds
Integrating human values with watersheds
Conserving and managing ecosystems, organisms and habitats

With support from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, established in the 1990s to address watershed issues related to salmon conservation, Sea Grant developed a Master Watershed Steward certification program, based on Extension's successful programs for Master Gardeners, Master Food Preservers and Master Woodland Managers. The watershed effort has trained and certified hundreds of land owners, property managers and others to work with their communities and local watershed councils on water conservation and quality issues. Today, the program is being integrated into Extension's broader Master Naturalist program to provide broader access and information about natural resource stewardship.

Protecting and conserving water for people and ecosystems

Contacts: Megan Kleibacker, Frank Burris, Sam Chan

As our cities and towns grow and develop, we modify streams, wetlands and hillsides with roads, houses and buildings that don’t absorb rainfall and snowmelt as the natural landscape does. Runoff from these surfaces picks up sediment and pollutants and carries them into our streams, increasing flood risk, damaging streambanks and fish habitat, and polluting streams, lakes, estuaries and even the sea. Sea Grant's Watershed Education team has produced a number of detailed, straightforward, how-to publications for homeowners, developers and others who want to lessen their impact on water quality and the environment. Titles such as the Oregon Rain Garden Guide and our Low-Impact Development series, coupled with workshops across the state, are helping change the way Oregonians garden, build and care for the natural world.

Easing the passage from river to sea and back

Contact: Guillermo Giannico

Tide gates are one-way doors integrated into dike systems that prevent saltwater flooding of lowlands during high tides, while allowing upland drainage into the estuary during low tides. But on streams that are the fresh-water home to Coho salmon, the gates can also prefent fish movement during critical migration to and from the sea. New "fish-friendly" gate designs were being rushed to market, but few had been tested with actual fish. With funding from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board (OWEB), Oregon Sea Grant's Guillermo Giannico studied three creeks draining into Coos Bay, two with different models of tide gates, and a third with none. Monitoring the streams over three years, Giannico found that both types of tide gates interfered with fish movement, but combining features of both styles should help move water - and fish - between estuary and stream. The Coos Watershed Association and Nehalem Marine Manufacturing are working on new gate designs and installation options to incorporate these findings.

Learn more:

Publications:

Oregon Sea Grant

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