The Santa Fe Watershed Association’s education program provides opportunities for locals to experience the Santa Fe River and its watershed through both school and public programs. Programs are designed to highlight a variety of ecosystems and explore ways that humans impact water and water impacts humans.
School Programs
My Water, My Watershed is an experiential, inquiry-based program for fifth grade Santa Fe Public School students to study and explore their watershed, learning about the complex relationships between living things and their environment. This program is been aligned with New Mexico STEM Ready! science standards to compliment classroom education.
Mi Arroyo, Mi Tierra was developed to support place-based outdoor education using local arroyos that are readily accessible to most schools. Each mini unit begins with a walk to observe different phenomena taking place in the arroyo. Through the lens of stormwater, students explore erosion, infiltration, and pollution while using hands-on activities that are aligned with 6th grade and middle school NM STEM Ready! Science Standards. Students will make connections between the history of the local arroyo system, how water moving through impacts the system, best management practices, and the role arroyos have played in local cultures over time.
Teaching students about measuring water quality and quantity is important to their understanding of the watershed. SFWA educators are available to go into classrooms or meet students at the river to explore what we are measuring and why we are measuring it. If you are a teacher and interested in student monitoring education, please reach out to us.
E-mail julie@santafewatershed.org or call (505) 820-1696.
Public Programs
Upper Santa Fe Watershed Hikes
Closed to the public since 1932, the Upper Santa Fe Watershed has undergone a dramatic transformation during the last decade to protect our watershed and water supply. Using management tools such as mechanical thinning and prescribed burning, the City of Santa Fe and U.S. Forest Service along with the Santa Fe Watershed Association have been working over the last several years to restore the forest.
These tours are your opportunity to learn about the restoration efforts and catch a glimpse of this nearly pristine forest that supplies 45% of the City’s drinking water supply. During a 5 mile roundtrip hike through The Nature Conservancy’s Santa Fe Canyon Preserve and the Upper Santa Fe Watershed, experts from the Santa Fe Watershed Association, the City of Santa Fe, and U.S. Forest Service lead participants on a visit past Nichols Reservoir to Agua Sarca and covers topics such as the history of Santa Fe’s drinking water supply, how the reservoir systems work, forest thinning and healthy forest ecology, the role of beavers in our watershed, and other topics about the ecology of the Santa Fe Watershed.
The purpose of a NM Climate Masters course is to provide 30 hours of in-class programming and field trip opportunities to participants over a 7 week time frame. The programming is designed to provide ideas of how we can reduce our carbon footprints through a variety of ways including transportation, energy conservation, waste, consumption, food, and water issues. Upon completion of the program, participants create and implement a 30 hour service project in the community. This project has two objectives for the participants: 1) Serve as a positive messenger of how we as individuals and a community can reduce our carbon footprint. 2) Incorporate the learned material into a small-scale, community service effort.
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Volunteer
