Recreation

The Red River of the North is a large, complex watershed, and a much misunderstood river. It's important to the communities of Fargo and Moorhead.

This river supplies water to the communities' residents and the river is where the water that we don't want ends up. Because we rely on the Red River to accomplish this, we need to understand the impact that we have on the health of the river. We must also learn how to perserve the quality of this vital resource, not only for ourselves but for our neighbors downstream.

River monitoring is a way of gathering information about the health of a river by observing, collecting and analyzing characteristic information.

This spring and fall, FM River volunteers collected field data and water samples every two weeks at three different sites.

Monitoring can be as simple as preparing a detailed visual survey of the river or as complex as collecting and analyzing numerous chemical, physical and biological data.

Field data collected include air temperature, water temperature, dissolved oxygen, salinity, conductivity, transparency and pH.