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The writer is a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He also holds appointments with the University of Nebraska Medical Center and University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Collaboration is good. And when the collaboration is between University of Nebraska faculty and employees from other state agencies, the result can be very good.
On the banks of the Elkhorn River, on the western edge of Douglas County, such a collaborative effort is taking shape.
Individuals from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the Papio-Missouri River Natural Resources District are working together to construct the Davis Prairie Data Shack. The Shack, as it is informally called, will be located on a piece of land owned by the University of Nebraska Foundation and leased to UNO.
The Shack will ultimately become a field station from which information on the Elkhorn River will stream back to UNO. The information will not only include data but also video clips produced by professors, university students and local high school students from Omaha and beyond.
The video clips will be developed on a variety of topics ranging from water quality to environmental health to social issues. These video clips will be uploaded to a Web site developed by UNO and available for free to the public as a community service.
Our students and in-state collaborators have worked on the Elkhorn River for the past decade. During those 10 years, we have witnessed some disturbing trends in water quality.
Our team cages local fish throughout the watershed. Within seven days, the females become verifiably less feminine. This observation has been seen repeatedly and has been replicated in laboratory experiments where field waters and sediment from the Elkhorn River have been returned to UNO.
Our collaborative team is confident that the sexual alteration of these female fish is due to chemical contaminants; however, the specific contaminant or chemical mixture has been elusive. Research to date, while compelling, has been thwarted by several confounding factors, including seasonality, drought, flash floods, water temperature and vandalism.
This is where the Shack will come in handy. The Shack will provide our team with a secure location from which to monitor water-quality issues within the Elkhorn River, three seasons per year, for many years to come.
The defeminization of fish has occurred far upstream from Douglas County, and there is no indication that the water at this site is polluted. Nevertheless, the Shack will allow for long-term monitoring of a watershed that may be under stress from both urban and rural activity.
Because information from the Shack will be available online, it is likely to enhance the overall visibility of this collaborative program.
Collaboration is, indeed, a good thing. And the collaborative efforts at work in the lower Elkhorn River will allow Nebraskans to ensure that the good life that all residents share is sustained well into the future.
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