The Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay will deploy dozens of volunteers to wadeable stream sites across the Grand Traverse Bay watershed to monitor water quality for two weeks in early June. Through a partnership with the Michigan Clean Water Corps and generous funding and support provided by local and regional program sponsors and donors, The Watershed Center’s Adopt-A-Stream program has collected high-quality stream data for over two decades.
Twice a year, trained volunteers monitor stream habitat and aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity and abundance at over 25 stream sites spanning Leelanau, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, and Antrim counties. Aquatic macroinvertebrates are organisms that live all or part of their life cycle in water (aquatic), are large enough to be seen with the naked eye (macro), and lack a backbone (invertebrate).
Macroinvertebrates are used as biological indicators of stream health as they are relatively easy to monitor, have short life cycles and therefore reflect recent changes in stream health, and have known tolerances to pollutants.
