• Chicken waterer
• Microbusiness ebook
• Homemade deer deterrent

Stream monitoring

Stream monitoring through the Save our Streams network is a great way to get involved in the health of your local waterways.  The system uses an ingenious series of biological indicators so that your average Joe can quickly learn to assess the water quality in a stream.  Rather than measuring the levels of every possible contaminant, you just scoop a random sample of aquatic macroinvertebrates (water bugs) out of the stream, pluck them off the net into white ice cube trays, and then tally up how many of each type of bug is present.  Do a bit of simple math and you can rate your stream on a scale of 0 to 12, where 0 to 7 ia unacceptable water quality conditions, 8 is a gray zone, and 9 to 12 means the stream is healthy.

In the mountains of Virginia, good quality streams tend to be chock full of scary-looking stoneflies (top photo) and delicate mayflies, while lower quality streams host worms, midges, and lunged snails.  Although the Save our Streams method doesn't delve further than high and low quality water, a book like J. Reese Voshell, Jr.'s A Guide to Common Freshwater Invertebrates of North America will turn your haul into even more of an indicator of water conditions.  For example, snails are usually abundant in hard water where dissolved calcium makes it easy to build their shells, and common netspinners (like the ones pictured below) abound in rivers with high levels of suspended debris for them to catch in their nets.  Straight pipes in the watershed upstream from our testing site make common netspinners especially abundant in our portion of the Clinch --- perhaps the reason our most recent sampling sunk the Clinch down in the unacceptable zone.

Although a few of the aquatic macroinvertebrates we net during stream monitoring live in the river all their lives, many more are larval stages of flying insects.  Most of the "stream bugs" live by scraping algae off rocks, filtering or capturing debris out of the water, or eating smaller macroinvertebrates.  None of them bite.

The Izaak Walton League of America developed the Save Our Streams network, but most states seem to have their own organization that coordinates with volunteers to sample local streams.  Here in Virginia, Virginia Save Our Streams runs training weekends and compiles data on their website.  Even more local groups, like The Clinch Coalition, often have stream monitoring equipment available for you to borrow and will help set up teams of two or three to monitor each stream.  If you decide to join up, you'll be responsible for monitoring your stream four times a year, a fun excuse to jump in the water.