a) Freshwater aquatic macroinvertebrates are insects and other organisms that live in the sediments of streams and rivers.  Many of these insects are in their larval and nymph stages before they "hatch" and become common airborne bugs such as mosquitoes, dragonflies and beetles.  The diversity of different orders of macroinvertebrates, as well as the presence (or absence) of several sensitive types of macroinvertebrates, is very telling about the overall health of an aquatic ecosystem.  These organisms comprise the base of the food chain for larger vertebrates such as fish.  Fly fisherman who understand the patterns and life-cycles of macroinvertebrates will certainly know where the fish are!  In fact many "flies" that fisherman use are made to replicate the various stages and species of different macroinvertbrates.

This project is a tale of two stream: The Mt. Hope River in Ashford, CT and the Park River in Hartford.  We will collect and compare the populations of macroinvertebrates that we find in both rivers and construct a series of quantitative analyses that will aid in the accepting or rejecting of your hypotheses.

This week we will return to the TCFS in Ashford and collect macroinvertebrates.  To outline how we will do this please  the EPA's webiste on Monitoring and Assessing Water Quality.  You will find lots of information here on EPA standards and reports for assessing water quality.  You can focus your attention to the Guidance for Volunteer Programs and within that page, the Volunteer Stream Monitoring: A Methods Manual page. Focus on Chapter 4: Macroinvertebrates and Habitat.

In the field we will conduct the following tasks that are outlined in the EPA's Macroinvertebreates Volunteer monitoring information. Please read this section carefully (Chapter 4.2  of the Methods guide - Streamside Biosurvey- pages 63-76):

Prelab assignment-

Answer questions related to Chapter 4.2 of the EPA Methods guide for a streamside biosurvey on the pre-lab link.