“It’d be 1.25,” Strubberg says, confirming a key finding. Turpin agrees. In a few weeks, these scientists will present their findings and recommendations on water quality improvements for the Nisqually watershed to hundreds of people attending a conference at Evergreen State College — even though none of them is old enough to drive.

Strubberg, Turpin and Beasley are all students at Cougar Mountain Middle School in Graham who are participating in the Nisqually River Environmental Project (NREP). Each year, NREP works with more than 50 teachers to send about 1,100 young scientists to locations across the Nisqually River Watershed for field research trips. On testing days, hundreds of students simultaneously test water at 28 designated sites — including Muck Creek, one of the watershed’s eight water bodies of concern .

Cougar Mountain sixth-grade science teacher Kim Williams organizes Science Squad, the school’s extracurricular program that connects grades six through eight with NREP.

Members of Cougar Mountain Middle School's Science Squad test the water quality of Muck Creek.

“I like our kids being able to see what real citizen scientists can go out and do, which is something I can't provide for them on a daily basis in a classroom,” Williams says. “They like these experiments because they have real-world applications that are are actually used for something. This allows them to feel that they are making a difference and doing meaningful work.”

In March, Science Squad’s eighth graders will join hundreds of other NREP students at the Student Green Congress, where they will present their school’s data to peers and teachers from other schools and make anti-pollution recommendations to area regulatory agencies. In 2018, recommendations touched on everything from invasive species removal to pet waste disposal to sustainable construction.

NREP is a 29-year-old program of the Nisqually River Council , a nonregulatory environmental stewardship group focused on the 78-mile Nisqually River watershed. NRC coordinates 24 partner organizations, including government agencies and the Nisqually Indian Tribe , in pursuing environmental steps toward a stronger, more sustainable watershed community.

One of NRC’s core goals includes conserving the Nisqually’s five native salmon species , whose plight radiates beyond the watershed to factor into broader challenges like orca whale recovery . Muck Creek is part of this work: The river is important for chum salmon, and climate change is creating stress on the steady streamflow they rely on during spawning seasons.

Student work follows salmon life cycles: They test water in the fall and plant trees, which cool streams and stabilize banks. They toss thawing salmon carcasses into creeks in the winter to replenish nutrients in the water. In spring, they perform another round of water quality testing to explore how the water quality changes seasonally.

Members of Cougar Mountain Middle School's Science Squad participate in the Nisqually River Environmental Program, conducting actual scientific work.

“It’s not just that we're giving kids an opportunity to have an outside field trip, but that they're choosing to become stewards of the watershed and taking ownership of caring for this resource and being scientists, and checking the validity of their data, and going through the Green Congress process,” says NRC Program Coordinator Emily McCartan, who facilitates NREP programs along with Brandon Bywater, NRC’s Water Quality Program Coordinator. “Taking action so that students feel hope and ownership in facing environmental challenges is an important part of NREP’s approach, and salmon are the ‘poster species’ for how their actions help.”

Students test for pH, nitrates, turbidity, dissolved oxygen and biochemical oxygen demand at two separate locations along Muck Creek — one shallow, one deep. McCartan says students produce “red flag” data that can alert professional researchers to particular areas of concern and help them get confirmation.

“We have 30 years of data, and if something really weird shows up [during student testing], that does get fed into the public data system [accessible to NRC’s agency partners] so that scientists who are monitoring it can say, ‘Oh, we've got a problem up here,’ and they can do additional tests,” she says.