Hi-Line Living: Data collected at Beaver Creek for future generations

Montana State University-Northern has partnered with several different agencies and the Hill County Park Board to start a long-term monitoring program for Beaver Creek Park to collect data on the changing ecosystem in the park.

"Her database is something that we can use 100 years from now," community member Lou Hagener said of Northern Associate Professor Terri Hildebrand's research, "to say here, OK, this is what we had."

Hagener has been helping Hildebrand with her study of natural resources on the park, along with to a number of her students.

Hildebrand said several agencies and members of the park board and community have expressed interest in looking at the natural resource monitoring of the park. She added that the park is of interest to a variety of parties because of the varying uses it provides, such as recreational activities, grazing and haying.

"There are individuals in the community and on the park board with just a general awareness that we need information on how the natural resources are doing out there," she said.

The best way to do it, Hildebrand said, is to have a long-term monitoring study because, although annual changes in vegetation can be affected by whether the year is wet or dry, a long-term study allows researchers to see a pattern over a number of years and get a better idea of what is normal for the park.

For example, during Labor Day of 2017, a portion of Beaver Creek Park burned in a wildfire - the East Fork Fire - which consumed more than 15,000 acres in the Bear Paw Mountains. The fires have opened up the land to a different variety of vegetation almost two years later, Hildebrand said.

She added that the fire had left the soil susceptible to many invasive species which cattle and people can unknowingly spread across the park and surrounding areas.

Hagener said that during the 1990s smaller studies were done in the park, but after the fire there was a newfound interest in taking a long-term look at the land. Hildebrand started the study in 2018 and, later, Natural Resource Conservation Services and the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks became involved, Hagener added.

"Mother nature has its own momentum," he said.

Hildebrand added that she was contacted by different members of the community, NRCS and the park board to start the study.

"I really like to do (these types of studies,) and I've done those kinds of things before," she said.

She added that she has also discussed and worked with Northern's College of Technical Sciences Professor Thomas Welch, who is working on a GIS map, for additional information about the park. Hildebrand said the study is a big collaborative effort between the university, NRCS, park board, Hill County Commission and individuals in the public, all getting together to get the study on track.

As a botanist, the first thing Hildebrand looked at when she began her study was the vegetation. 

Vegetation at Beaver Creek

Hildebrand said that last year she started doing a lot of research about the park and setting up seven different vegetation plots for studying. She added that two of her students, Northern's Katia Michelotti and Hailey Warren, assisted her in the study.

In June of this year, she and her team returned to the vegetation plots and began recording data. She added that normally the study would be conducted during the fall, but because of the wide variety of plants, which bloom at different times of the year, June was ideal. 

The study normally would also be done in rotations, monitoring two to three plots each year, but with the study still in its infancy, all seven plots needed to be recorded. Hildebrand said her researchers are using standard operating procedures, so the study is universal and any agency can utilize the data.

"Because this is a baseline look, (we will have a) comparison of what we did in 2019 verses what we collect in 2034," she said.

The study not only is a good exercise for her students, she said, but also collects good scientific data.

She added that Michelotti and Warren are fantastic students and are some of the finest Northern has to offer the community.

Michelotti and Warren are both seniors at Northern, graduating next spring, Michelotti with a bachelor's in biology and Warren with a bachelor's in biology and business administration.

They both said that working with Hildebrand has been a great experience and they have learned a lot from getting in the field research experience.

Michelotti said they both have been students of Hildebrand for the past three years, two of which they have also been working with her on the vegetation study at Beaver Creek.

Warren added that something she was interested in was how fires affect different areas and make areas more susceptible to invasive plant species.

But Michelotti and Warren are not the only students assisting with the research of Beaver Creek, Hildebrand said, adding that she has eight other students helping with water monitoring for the park.

Water monitoring

Hildebrand said that during the summer she received a Research to Employment grant from the Little Rock Institute, allowing her to get eight students to assist in water quality research.

"The idea behind the grant is to give these students, that normally wouldn't have an undergraduate research experience, to give them that experience," she said. "The idea behind this grant is to expose students, that aren't necessarily going to go to graduate school, to research. And the idea being all of those skills that you learn doing research are things that employers want."

It is a very different spin on how research is used with students, she said, adding that Montana Department of Education was very excited for the program.

The students also get experience in a molecular lab, and all of them learn how to isolate DNA, as well as how to pull DNA out of soil samples.

"They are just getting this diverse experience that they wouldn't have otherwise," she said.

The grant also included funding for water chemistry testing equipment, she added. Her and her students set up six different sites along Beaver Creek to monitor what happens in the area in a long-term study.

She added that their study is only a snapshot of Beaver Creek, as much of the creek weaves through both reservations and public lands.

"We're getting all sorts of cool information from that," she said.

She said the survey equipment they use at each site allows them to test for pH levels and conductivity, measure water flow and water sediment and look at a variety of other details.

In the future, she said, they will start another study on the creek involving invertebrates such as insects and microbes.

She said one of the things they tested for this year was for coliforms, such as E. coli. She added that in any large amount of water with a large amount of wildlife, it is expected to find E. coli in the water. Beaver Creek has wildlife, cattle and people utilizing the park and this increases the amount of E. coli found.

It is hard to find any stream or creek which doesn't have E. coli in it, she said, unless someone tests the water source and addresses it.

"It's sort of normal," she said, adding that it is not a concern unless someone drinks the water.

Beaver Creek moving forward

The data collected by Hildebrand will be turned over to the park board at the end of the summer for them to use, Hildebrand said.

"What they do with that information is entirely up to them," she said.

She added that she also has an agreement with the park board that she will be able to publish her findings and hold demonstrations and presentations to share her findings with other agencies and researchers.

She said the data is useful because it can be used to combat some of the problems found in the park, such as noxious or invasive weeds and the reduction of grazeable land.

She added that the park board could use the study to experiment with managing techniques, such as alternating sections of Beaver Creek Park between recreational use and grazing use to help reduce the spread of invasive species.

In the future, with other agencies expressing interest in Hildebrand's study, she said she is considering expanding some of her studies to get a more in-depth look at Beaver Creek.

Hildebrand added that no one ever said in the conservation world that they had "too much data."

"I think it would be great from a recreational standpoint," Hildebrand said. "Let's get the data and then see how we can use the data."