Counting Bugs to Measure Stream Water Quality

This northern leopard frog enjoys the excellent water quality of the Kokosing River in Millwood, where one of the volunteer monitoring stations is located.  (Photo by Don Comis)

When I attended a biological stream monitoring workshop conducted by "Save Our Streams" in Maryland, I was pleased to learn it was fun and easy to assess water quality by identifying and counting water creatures, mostly larvae, with the help of a one-page chart.

It's just fun for all to stand in a stream holding a seine net to catch the creatures and then count and release them.  I did it with children at our church in Maryland for about a year.

The idea is to see how diverse the organisms are, indicating good water quality, and to see if the good water quality indicating organisms like mayfly nymphs outweigh poor water quality indicators like snails and other scavengers.

This came to mind when I saw that there will be a similar workshop conducted near where I am currently, in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, on May 28.  

We're blessed here to have the very clean Kokosing River and volunteers that monitor it regularly at several locations.

To learn more about the upcoming workshop, go to:  http://watercraft.ohiodnr.gov/sqm .  Also, check out a longer version of this blog at my website:  www.doncomis.simplesite.com.