Recent News
News Articles |
"Riverwatch Students check out Burnett Creek" |
"Some mindsets worry county's water educator" |
Ag Days, 2011
Matt Shively and Monica Christopher assisted with the Tippecanoe County Ag Days held on April 5th and 6th at the Tippecanoe County Fairgrounds. Over 1337 students from surrounding schools were educated about the importance of trees. Trees help improve water quality by providing shade to avoid thermal pollution, protecting existing habitat, as well as, soaking up excess nutrients and filtering pollutants from stormwater runoff (such as heavy metals and sediment). After the presentation, all the students were given a gray dogwood. The Tippecanoe County Soil and Water Conservation District and Tree Lafayette partnered to make this presentation possible.
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Green Week 2010
Purdue faculty, staff and students sponsored several events to celebrate the university's Green Week 2010 (Oct. 4-9, 2010), including a Wabash River cleanup, an alternative energy transportation show, and contests to reduce water and energy usage and increase recycling. View slideshow from Green Week 2010.
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(Photos courtesy of Purdue University)
New Brochures
Two new brochures are available for viewing and download
Journal Article Published
The Tippecanoe County Partnership for Water Quality has partnered with Linda Prokopy, Assistant Professor at Purdue University Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, to author a paper that has been published in the Journal Of Extension. The paper compares different methods of collecting data to gain knowledge about stormwater.
The TCPWQ wanted a general idea of the Tippecanoe County’s citizens knowledge of watersheds and water quality concepts. This would help the TCPWQ evaluate what education needed to be disseminated to the public about stormwater and address the county’s Phase II needs. During 2006 and 2008, the TCPWQ handed out a ten question convenience survey at the Tippecanoe County 4-H Fair. The survey was also available online and distributed in neighborhoods on door hangers while volunteers marked storm drains.
The data from both years was collected to see if in two years there had been an increase of citizen’s stormwater knowledge. The project was taken a step further by Professor Prokopy and her grad students as they mailed a similar survey and contacted landowners by telephone. There target audience and methods of collecting the data using random sampling was key to differentiating each groups final information.
After the two year project, the TCPWQ and Professor Prokopy compared their findings and correlated the data into data sets that can be seen in the published paper. In summation, using data for the same questions collected at a county fair, through the Internet, in a mail survey, and in a phone survey, our findings indicate that data collected through convenience surveys as are not representative of the larger population.
You can view the full article online at the Journal of Extension.
