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 during a two-week period in early June.
Through a partnership with the Michigan Clean Water Corps, and generous funding and support provided by local and regional sponsors and donors, the Adopt-A-Stream program has collected highquality stream data for over two decades.
Twice each year, trained volunteers assess stream habitat and survey aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity and abundance at more than 20 sites across Leelanau, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, and Antrim counties. Aquatic macroinvertebrates are small, spineless organisms that live all or part of their life cycle in water and are visible to the naked eye. They serve as key indicators of stream health because they are relatively easy to monitor, have short life cycles that reflect recent environmental changes, and exhibit known tolerances to different types of pollution.
