Utilizing Diverse Communities within Menomonie for Water Quality through Community Organizations

I’ve learned in the past few years of my life that community is a crucial element of what’s important to me. But for me, that has only been defined as far as having people around me who are supportive and make me feel at home. This summer I’ve had the chance to really think about what makes a community works, how it actually functions, and how it creates change. The more academic, but helpful, term for this is community capacity. It’s a concept that includes elements that work together to accomplish just that, a functioning community. These elements include having a sense of community, commitment, being able to define and access resources, as well as the ability to set and achieve goals. Actually thinking about the elements that contribute to a community is valuable when it comes to solving issues. At this point in my life, my interactions with community have been transitory – traveling and moving around, working seasonal jobs, being a student. I haven’t had the chance to establish myself as part of a long-term community yet. Having the opportunity to have a glimpse of what that looks like and study it this summer in Menomonie has been insightful. It is very fitting then that my final research project revolved around this idea of how community organizations can contribute to the community’s capacity for changes in water quality.  

Long Live Nach Raff: A Summer Session in Policy Analysis and Interdisciplinary Fun

“We are all born with a unique genetic blueprint, which lays out the basic characteristics of our personality as well as our physical health and appearance...And yet, we all know that life experiences do change us.”

- Joan D. Vinge

Purpose. Many aspects of life are centered upon a sense of purpose, upon the “why?” factor that either motivates us or moves us to find another use for our time. Fortunately, this summer was devoid of the latter and saturated with the former. The beginning of these past eight weeks was nothing short of a search for purpose as I tried to find my footing within the larger scope of the program. Thanks to the guidance and support of my faculty mentor Zach Raff, that purpose was found in short order as we promptly set our research project in motion. While I was excited to begin and well aware of how rewarding the process would be, I quickly realized that this summer was going to be a lot more than an exercise in research exposure; the experience as a whole would shape my career goals and personal outlook on what it means to find one’s niche in the world.

Trading Manure for Fertilizer May Improve Water Quality

       The water in Dunn County is green. We know nutrient runoff is a major contributor to the algal blooms that can be found in Lakes Menomin and Tainter, but how can we most effectively reduce the amount of these nutrients getting into our lakes and rivers?  

Water Quality's Impact on the Red Cedar Watershed Economy

Environmental sustainability has gotten a lot of attention in the last few years, and with it, has come even more controversy. Many will claim that protecting the environment hurts businesses and cuts jobs by making it more complicated to grow due to more regulations. However, my research (accompanied by Madison Biggs and Chris Ferguson) has proved otherwise. 

Solutions in the Sediment

What if the solution to remediating the lake lies in viewing the problem as a potential solution? This summer I was so fortunate to be a part of a research team that looked at the Phosphorus loading situation with fresh eyes.

Harmful blooms of cyanobacteria occur annually in the anthropogenically eutrophic lakes across the Red Cedar Watershed. Toxic conditions produced by cyanobacteria threaten the health of both terrestrial and aquatic flora and fauna. Many efforts have been made to remediate the lake system however removing the phosphorus which causes the blooms proves to be a challenge. Not all bad though, Phosphorus is an essential plant macronutrient as it aides in the production of energy. This study proposed using phosphorus laden sediment which has been carried off of farm fields as a soil amendment.

What Does Soil and Water Quality Mean for the Economy?

                “Investments in environmental issues are job-killers!”

                “It’s going to hurt the economy!”

                These are common misconceptions about the effects of tackling water and soil quality issues. However, after researching this concept at University of Wisconsin – Stout for 8 weeks, Chris Ferguson Ph.D., Ryleigh Prochnow, and I discovered that improving the health of the environment can have a positive impact on the local economy.

Riparian Buffer Impact on Stream Health in the Wilson Annis Watershed, Dunn County, WI

As part of the geography team this summer with the LAKES REU program we wanted to find out what measures of stream health riparian buffers impacted most. A riparian buffer is a zone or strip of dense vegetation along a body of water, such as a stream or lake. This zone aids in preventing erosion and pollutants, via stream runoff, from entering the water. The area we chose to examine was the Wilson Annis Watershed in Dunn County, WI. We chose this watershed because it was accessible and because of the implementation of the Wilson Annis Watershed Partnership, a program dedicated to help the watershed. Within the Watershed we chose fourteen sites along Wilson and North Wilson Creek to analyze, where we had to ask landowners for their permission to enter the stream through their property where we were, several times, warned about a bull potentially coming over to the stream.