Thursday November 20th, Gunpowder RIVERKEEPER®’s Theaux Le Gardeur, staff, intern, and volunteer met at the Maritime Conference Center in Linthicum for the 2025 Maryland Water Monitoring Council Annual Conference. 475 people attended the 31st iteration of this event focused on Embracing Innovation to Protect and Restore Maryland’s Waters. The day began with keynote speakers Jeremy Werdell, Project Scientist for NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem) Satellite Mission and Rich Ortt, Director, Resource Assessment Service of Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Werdell’s talk described the frontier of satellite imagery to move from identifying the quantity of phytoplankton in the world’s oceans to their qualities, such as beneficial, harmful or nuisance species. Ortt’s talk implored listeners to remember the whole water cycle, including ground and atmospheric waterways which were underrepresented in the audience’s work.
From there we dispersed to present our research poster to interested parties, investigate other organizations’ work, and to listen to breakout sessions. Gunpowder RIVERKEEPER’s poster on Bacterial Monitoring in the Gunpowder Falls and YSI Monitoring in the Gunpowder River by Chichedo Duru, Brady Bayne, Tristan MacGregor, Steve Duker, Sophie Zuckman, Joe Ottomano, and Theaux Le Gardeur was presented before a breakout session by Brady and Tristan. Intern Maxwell Diegel displayed his student poster on the effect of reforesting Abingdon Woods on the Ha-Ha Branch in Harford County.
Overall it was a great day to network with our fellow water monitors throughout the state to see the exciting work they’re doing in their waterways and to make those valuable connections that will help us to improve our water monitoring efforts.
