Investigating Your Watershed: Using Benthic Macroinvertebrates as a Measure of Water Quality

 

Karin Readel

Tested Studies in Laboratory Teaching, 2002, Volume 23

Abstract

The use of benthic macroinvertebrates to determine water quality is one of many exercises used in a nonmajor course at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County called Water: An Interdisciplinary Study. Students in this course work in groups throughout the semester, performing various lab exercises dealing with the chemical, physical, and biological properties of water. They then use these skills to design and complete a group project based on water quality. During one two-hour lab period, student teams sample different regions of the Herbert Run, a stream that runs through campus. Each team identifies a site, and then collects, sorts and preserves organisms for later identification. During a subsequent lab, we discuss classification of organisms and the use of dichotomous keys. Student teams then identify the organisms they collected (to the order level) and, using a provided worksheet, determine the water quality index value for their particular site. Finally, the data and locations for each site are made available online for comparison between sites, and with the chemical analysis data generated during other labs.

Keywords:  aquatic insects, stream water quality, invertebrate, aquatic ecology, stream ecology

University of Chicago (2001)