Sapphire Front Project Data Analysis (2018-2023)

This work was conducted as part of a one semester Montana State University undergraduate research course, led by Dr. Adam Sigler with support from Bridget Warrenfeltz. Olivia Lynch was the undergraduate student assigned to the Bitterroot program for the course. 

This work was conducted in consultation with the Bitterroot River Protection Association representatives Michael Howell and Chris Clancy. 

Fall 2024 was the initial pilot of this course, with the intention to produce useful data summaries for volunteer monitoring programs while simultaneously providing hands on student learning opportunities.  

This work was supported by funding from Montana Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ).

Report

Final report available here.

Student presentation

Included here is the recorded student presentation summarizing results and the associated powerpoint file. 

Tutorial on how to interpret boxplots 

The report and student presentation include multiple boxplot visualizations. Linked here is a 6 minute tutorial on how to read and interpret boxplots.

Map of sampling sites

Included here is an interactive map of the Sapphire Front Project sampling sites.

Excel data files

Included here are the various data files and excel workflows used in this analysis. 

R Scripts 

The following zipped file contains the R code and workflow used to preform the load analysis.