PRESIDIO COUNTY — Last Tuesday, Marfa High School’s juniors and seniors took a field trip to the hoodoo’s in Big Bend Ranch State Park. The group is part of the River Rangers program sponsored by the Big Bend Conservation Alliance.
The students collect water samples from different regions along the Rio Grande. They also enjoyed an interpretive program from the local park ranger out of Fort Leaton about erosion and its effects on the river basin. Then students all enjoyed creating cyanotype prints using the local flora and fauna.
The students learned that Texas has 15 major river basins and over 3,700 named streams. The amount of rainfall an area receives has a great influence on the size and flow of a stream, which in turn has a great influence on the kind of aquatic ecosystems found in it. Rainfall varies from over 50 inches per year in East Texas to less than 10 inches per year in the west. In some areas, Texas streams stop flowing and dry up because of too little rainfall or due to human uses of stream water.
