Canyon Park Junior High seventh-grade students of Haakon Aasan are learning about various environmental study areas with the aid of real world field trips. The class ventured out on Oct. 15 and 16 to the Northshore School District’s Outdoor Learning Center trail, located just north of the North Creek Forest on school district property, for hands-on experiments.

“Seventh graders have already removed invasive Himalayan blackberry with the help of parents in September, and hope to grow native plants for the area,” said Aasan.

Students routinely release Coho salmon into the stream each summer. They recently took water quality samples with portable electronic devices to measure the salinity of the stream. They also measured dissolved oxygen, temperature, conductivity and suspended solids.

“This gives them an idea of what needs improvement for salmon to thrive in the North Creek Watershed,” said Aasan. “The verdict? The water had more salts in it than the ideal salmon range would be.”

Students are currently brainstorming ideas within their power for how to improve the quality of the water for the salmon.