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Powder Valley High School science teacher Brian Wachs, right, and senior Josh Gorrell collect stream profile information near North Powder. - The Observer/DICK MASON

Wachs wants his Powder Valley High School students to see the formula at work for themselves.

So once a week Wachs, a science and agriculture teacher, hops behind the wheel of a small white school bus and transports about 14 students to Curt and Cheryl Martin’s North Powder ranch. There students haul out GPS surveying equipment, set it on tripods and study the banks of Wolf Creek

(Manning’s Equation, in case you’ve forgotten, involves frictional coefficients, sinuosity and something called hydrologic radius. It’s a way to calculate a creek’s or stream’s velocity and it helps students to change the velocity — and reduce erosion and improve stream health — by altering factors within the equation.)

Students plan to help the Martins (Cheryl Martin is also a Powder Valley High School science teacher) to improve Wolf Creek through restoration projects, but first they must measure and diagram cross-sections of the creek to figure out where their restoration projects will do the most good.

“This is life skills training,’’

explained Doni Clair, a water quality specialist with the Oregon Department of Agriculture, who has been

accompanying Wachs and his students on their weekly forays to Wolf Creek. “They get out here and you can just see the lights coming on. To see these high school kids out here with their transits is a cool thing. What they’re learning works in the real world.’’

For his part, Wachs is grateful for the weekly effort Clair has made to get his students real-world experience.

“I have the theory,’’ he said. “She knows how to do stuff.’’

As soon as they’re off the bus, students break into groups of two and four, scattering along the banks of the creek to map the portion they’re working on.

“It’s a hard class, but you actually learn something,’’ said Sami Fritz, a sophomore.

Creating a stream profile involves waders and no small amount of patience. One Tuesday this month students were out in a steady rain, using the equipment to note how far their partner — who was holding a long metal rod marked off in inches — descended as he or she got closer to Wolf Creek.

Using Global Information System software, the information is fed into a computer and the stream profile is compiled from all the data.

The profile — similar to those made by professionals in the field, including the Bureau of Land Management and Natural Resources Conservation Service — will help students decide where, for example, to plant willows, which were being stored at the school’s greenhouse, waiting for spring to force their buds open before planting.

More riparian vegetation, of course, cools off the creek, helps fish and generally improves the health of the stream.

That, in turn, will, the students hope, help the Martins’ cattle to have more water later in this summer’s grazing season.

Powder Valley High School senior Tyler Moe assists with the collection of stream profile information using new survey equipment PVHS recently purchased with money from a grant. - The Observer/DICK MASON

The other thing he likes about the program is that through it his students wrote a proposal for a $3,800 Diack Ecology Foundation grant, which their school received. The grant allowed PVHS to purchase some of the equipment its students are using in the field.

PVHS students Tyler Moe and Josh Gorrell are trying to build on the earlier grant-writing success. They’ve applied for a $150,000 Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board grant to purchase computers and more equipment to accomplish an even bigger project than this year’s on Wolf Creek: a three-year, three-phase erosion control and stream bed enhancement project.

The students will be competing with everyone else for the grant — agency folks, ranchers and communities.

“I actually think they have a good chance’’ at landing the grant, Clair said. They will learn whether their efforts were successful in a matter of weeks, she said.

Just getting the data and paperwork together has been a consuming experience for two or three months, Gorrell and Moe said.

“We just work on the grant as much as possible,’’ Moe said. “We’ve had to jump in with both feet. Sometimes it feels a little overwhelming.’’

“We just give them everything we can as professionally as we can and hope they’ll fund it,’’ Gorrell said. “We have no idea if we’ll get it, but there have been positive indications.’’

Back in the classroom, the students have returned from their two-hour stint at Wolf Creek. Wachs is explaining the math behind Manning’s Equation, and when the class is slow to catch on to what he’s saying, he leaps up on a table and waves his arms, pulling answers from seemingly out of nowhere.

“Would you place your weir upstream or downstream? Down? Why?’’ he asks. “Because you don’t want your stream to be too efficient!’’

The bell rings, and students go off to learn something else.

With any luck, it, too will serve them well in the real world.