What began last year as a vision of a recreational 2,400-mile paddle trip down the Missouri River for adventurer Anthony Reinert quickly evolved into a team-based research endeavor.
Reinert contacted fellow Fort Lewis College student Nicholas Kanelos and pitched the idea to canoe the Missouri River this summer.
Kanelos accepted the opportunity and suggested creating a documentary, Reinert said. The duo also began looking into the water quality of the Missouri.
“A big part of it for us is river health; the Missouri is an important watershed for our country,” Reinert said.
As they focused more on the river’s water quality, Kanelos and Reinert invited fellow student and researcher Aaron McDowell to join the research effort.
McDowell is interested in water engineering and was immediately able to develop a senior seminar project focused on the Missouri River, Reinert said.
“The trip merges science, art and adventure all together,” said Kanelos, the team documentarian. “It became a perfect storm of three guys who want to do a river trip involving science, discovery and humanity.”
The Missouri River Research Endeavor will survey the biological health of the river in hopes to better understand the human impacts on a vital water source, he said.
McDowell wants to focus on how agricultural runoff affects the water system.
The project is about understanding the effects of land use on the Missouri River, but the research the group is doing can provide knowledge about other rivers, including the Animas, said Heidi Steltzer, professor of biology at Fort Lewis College. The Animas River is similar to the upper regions of the Missouri River near Three Forks, Montana, she said.
McDowell will take samples of plankton in different parts of the stream to understand the environmental changes and effects on the river.
The trio will encounter 15 dams along the way. Each one creates a separate ecosystem, Kanelos said.
McDowell is going to look at the composition of the plankton community in the different sections of the river. The chemistry of the plankton will allow him to get some sense for the health of the river, Steltzer said
He will also be looking at pH levels, water turbidity, oxygenation, and amounts of dissolved nitrates and phosphates in the different sections of the river, Kanelos said.
McDowell’s expectation is that he will be able to see significant impacts from agricultural runoff, Steltzer said.
Steltzer volunteered to be McDowell’s senior research adviser.
Steltzer said she wanted to provide McDowell with guidance by helping him think through the project and find resources needed to make it happen.
FLC offers a college-wide grant competition each semester for student-led projects, she said.
McDowell wrote a two-page proposal that projected the objectives of the endeavor and detailed how research would be conducted. McDowell received a $1,300 grant for the project. The money will help purchase supplies and research equipment.
“The budget for the whole trip is $6,000 total,” Kanelos said. “That includes the purchase of our boat as well as all of our equipment.”
On June 3, the team plans to embark on the two-month trip down the Missouri. They hope to arrive in St. Louis by Aug. 1. The team will begin the 2,400-mile journey near the river’s source in Three Forks.
“We will be traveling in a 23-foot Wynona Canoe called the Minnesota III,” Kanelos said. “We picked this boat because it is long and narrow and is built for speed and endurance.”
The team plans to travel 40 miles a day, Reinert said.
Many different organizations and government agencies do independent research on different parts of the Missouri River, Kanelos said.
“As far as we have been able to find, there has not been a trip that has gone down the entire Missouri River and collected data from one season,” he said. “The last time this happened was with Lewis and Clark.”
In conducting this research, the team would like to help raise awareness that the world’s oceans and water systems that serve as a pantry for food and water are also being used as a dumping ground, he said.
“We wanted to make this trip something that was more than the self-gratification of an adventure,” Kanelos said.
When the team returns, the three students will analyze the data and create new multimedia and films to share their knowledge with the community.
tferraro@durangoherald.com. Taylor Ferraro is a student at Fort Lewis College and an intern at The Durango Herald.
Incorrect information was given in an earlier version of this story.
