Big Muddy Speaker Series at Bike Stop Cafe

BMSS now at Bike Stop Cafe – still on 2nd Wed.
701 S. Riverside Drive in Saint Charles – also accessible from Main Street at the corner of Perry
https://www.bikestopcafes.com/cafe

Salty Winters: How Road Salt Changes Lives
Danelle Haake, PhD, Stream Ecologist and Director of Illinois RiverWatch
6:00 p.m. Social Hour
7:00 p.m. Presentation
Presentation is FREE and open to the public!

When winter snow and ice falls, people still go about their daily lives: working, playing, learning, and driving their cars to get where they’re going. This is made possible through our use of plows to remove the top layer of snow from the pavement and the use of road salt to melt the rest. But where does all that salt go? And what happens when it gets there?

Danelle Haake is the Director of Illinois RiverWatch and a Stream Ecologist with the National Great Rivers Research & Education Center in Alton, Illinois. She has worked in the water quality and ecological restoration realms for over 20 years, including developing water quality management plans in Iowa, managing reconstructed prairie and woodland habitats with Missouri Botanical Garden, and studying the impact of road salt on stream ecosystems. Since 2010, she has been coordinating community science participants in an effort to better understand the connections between road salt and water quality.

The Illinois RiverWatch Network is a volunteer monitoring initiative coordinated by the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center (NGRREC℠). RiverWatch is the only statewide biological monitoring program that provides volunteers a hands-on opportunity to become stewards of our local waterways by monitoring stream habitat and water quality. The program was originally established in 1995 and has since expanded to the statewide level, with over 200 participants monitoring streams annually.