Braiding Partner Interests into a Youth Water Quality Monitoring Program

Many of America’s cherished national parks are seeing a domino effect of ecological change triggered by climatic shifts. Long-term monitoring offers an opportunity to document baseline conditions, detect change, and make informed decisions about how to address our uncertain future. Given the National Park Service’s commitment to embedding science-informed practices into all aspects of the agency’s work, we recently established a multi-entity partnership to improve direct experiences with water science in park-based youth programs that conduct monitoring, for the sake of both youth science literacy and long-term monitoring. Here, Grand Teton National Park, Teton Science Schools, and the University of Wyoming Science & Mathematics Teaching Center share an approach and lessons learned from an ongoing project to foster engagement of 5th-graders via water quality monitoring opportunities along the Snake River. We forged a partnership that evolved, much like the ebb and flow of the braided channel of the Snake. Insights include some of the challenges in identifying meaningful project elements and creating age-appropriate scientific monitoring protocols that meet converging goals and values.