Niles Community High School Students visited Firefighters Park along the Rouge River on October 1st to identify the benthic macro-invertebrates of the stream. Students got in the river with nets to catch the stream insects in order to identify and determine their presence in the river.

Benthic macroinvertebrates (also known as "benthos") are small animals living among stones, logs, sediments and aquatic plants on the bottom of streams, rivers and lakes. They are large enough to see with the naked eye (macro) and have no backbone (invertebrate).

Macroinvertabrates provide an important food source in the stream and because they tolerate different stream conditions and levels of pollution, their presence or absence is used to indicate clean or polluted water.

If you would like to take a training course or volunteer in a fall bug hunt, please visit: https://therouge.org/bug-hunts/ for more information.

This week, 8th Grade students from Larson Middle School got a chance to get hands on with science doing chemical, physical, and biological monitoring at the Gibson Drain on Larson Middle Schools property. The chemical monitoring consisted of testing the drain water for pH, nitrates, phosphates, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, temperature, and coliform bacteria. The physical monitoring consisted of measuring the velocity, erosion and structure of the drain. While the biological monitoring consisted of collecting macro invertebrates with nets, identifying them, and determining their abundance. Students wrote down their findings and were eager to get their hands dirty!