AM students participate in “A Day in the Life of the Hudson and Harbor” program

This is the eighth year that the RCC Environmental Pollution class has participated in "A Day in the Life of the Hudson and Harbor” program.  The students examined Hudson River water quality and chemistry, tracked the river’s tides and currents, and studied fish and invertebrates in a virtual setting.

“Day in the Life of the Hudson and Harbor” is an annual event coordinated by The Hudson River Estuary Program of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.  Each fall, environmental education centers are encouraged to team up with school classes along the Hudson River to create a day-in-the-life picture of the river from the Troy Dam to New York Harbor. The event began in 2003 with a modest 300 student participants and has grown to over 5000 students and individual participants in recent years, sampling over 90 sites from the New York Bight up to Peebles Island on the Hudson River. Each year, the accumulated data and results provide a better understanding of this historic and vital estuary system.

 

Albertus Magnus students focused on the southern portion of the Hudson River stretching from New York Harbor to Newburgh, NY. They collected and analyzed the virtually collected samples in class. The students recorded Temperature, Salinity, Dissolved Oxygen, Turbidity, and identified at least a dozen species of fish and aquatic organisms that inhabit the river and estuary. The students received first-hand knowledge of scientific methods, learned to analyze and interpreted large data sets as they learned how natural systems work.