East Fork Lewis River Water Quality
& Aquatic Macroinvertebrates Study

• Special thanks to Dr. William Feddeler and Ben Ewing for helping us get started with water quality testing. (We wouldn't be doing this without their initial assistance and ongoing encouragement!)

• Dr. Feddeler and Cory Samia (staff member at the Water Resources Education Center, Vancouver, WA), coordinate a county-wide water quality monitoring program involving numerous schools and classrooms. In addition, they coordinate the annual Watershed Congress, held each Spring (approximately mid-May) at the Water Resources Education Center. Student representatives from numberous classrooms around the area come together to share the results of their studies with each other, local representatives, environmental agency personnel, and interested community members. This is an outstanding culminating event to a year of water quality testing. Thank you Cory, Bill (and his wife!), Ben, Judy, and the WREC staff, and the numberous volunteers for hosting this event.

• Judy Bufford is a Clark County watershed steward and now works with Bill Feddeler and Cory Samia to coordinate field trips with the WREC Watershed Monitoring Program. Judy has been a regular volunteer on our field trips to the East Fork, leading the macro collection and identification activity. Her knowledge of macros and enthusiasm for things aquatic is contageous. She's helped us identify a number of unfamiliar macros (ribbon worm, rolled-winged stonefly, ...) and directed us to Tiger Lily pond as another interesting place to collect macros.

• In past years (2004-06) we received assistance from the Environmental Information Cooperative to enhance our study of macroinvertebrates and water quality. Dr. Pete Ritson, former Education Coordinator for the EIC, Hannah Dondy and Christine Sullivan, Americorp members, developed resources and made classroom presentations to prepare students for the water quality testing experience. Also, they arranged for testing equipment and experienced water monitors to join us in the field. Thank you, EIC and volunteers, for sharing your time and knowledge with students and teachers in Clark County.

• Jeff Adams, former Director of Aquatic Programs for The Xerces Society and author of The Stream Bugs as Biomonitors: Guide to Pacific Northwest Macroinvertebrate Monitoring and Identification <-- link takes you to the Xerces website. Jeff has been very helpful in answering our questions about the identification of aquatic organisms and their relavance to water quality monitoring. Information about his CD-ROM and field guide to Pacific Northwest macroinvertebrates can be found on the Resources page. See his comments about:
  • East Fork Lewis River macros - Spring 2005
  • Upper East Fork Lewis River macros - Fall 2006
  • Salmon Creek Macros - Dec. 2005
  • Lacamas Creek Macros (alderfly & riffle beetle) - Nov. 2005

• Patrick Edwards, instructor at Portland State University, donated copies of his biomonitoring field guide (which includes some CAM 7/8 macro photos). Mr. Edwards also arranged and taught a grant-funded workshop for educators (Summer 2005) on biomonitoring using family-level identification of macroivertebrates. This grant also included funds for classroom monitoring equipment and additional copies of his field guide. (Information about the Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Field Guide and Biomonitoring Reference Manual for Students, Educators and Volunteers Collecting in the Willamette Valley can be found on the Resources page.)

• Thanks, also, to the many parent chaperones who have helped make these field trips possible.

This website began as a way to catalog and to share the freshwater macroinvertebrates we encountered as part of our water quality testing on the East Fork of the Lewis River. Initially, we sampled the river for macrcoinvertebrates (organisms without backbones) just to see what kind of organisms lived amongst the rocks at the bottom of the river. We were surprised to see the variety of life that existed there. We brought some specimens into the classroom and began taking pictures. By magnifying and photographing, we were better able to compare our organisms with descriptions and illustrations found in various keys. Thus, we began identifying the aquatic "bugs" we found. We learned the differences between mayflies and stoneflies and other types of organisms. We soon discovered, however, that the creatures we collected didn't always match the images found in the keys and field guides we were using. Furthermore, we began noticing a number of differences between individual bugs of the same type. For example, as we began identifying mayflies, we found that there was considerable variety within this order of insects. As we compared the images, we found ourselves sorting them by these new details. It took a while, but we finally found a few resources (including two local authors of macroinvertebrate field guides: Jeff Adams [The Xerces Society] and Patrick Edwards [PSU] to help us classify the organisms to this next level. Even now, as we sort some of the macros by family groups, we notice more differences and realize that there are additional levels of classification which can be explored.

We have done our best to classify the organisms shown in this website, but realize there is more that can be done. We also realize that these images are only a sampling of the aquatic communities found in the area. More work can be done by: 1) collecting and identifying additional organisms; 2) refining the classification -- most are identified by their phyla, class, and order, but it would be beneficial to identify to the family level; 3) researching the specific habitat and feeding strategies for different organisms; 4) researching the water quality or stress tolerance of the various invertebrates. Most of the identification and stress tolerance information has come from three sources (references to these and other materials can be found on the Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Resources page):

• Macroinvertebrates of the Pacific Northwest, A Field Guide, by Jeff Adams and Mace Vaughan
• A Guide to Common Freshwater Invertebrates of North America, by J. Reese Voshell, Jr.
• Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Field Guide and Biomonitoring Reference Manual For the Willamette Valley, by Patrick Edwards

Most of the images are of living macroinvertebrates that were photographed at school using a video camera equipped with a zoom-macro lens and connected to an old AV-equipped Macintosh 7600 computer. (Check out the camera and stand used for capturing the macro images used in this project.) Some of the smallest organisms were captured with the video camera attached to a microscope (the red-colored water mite and closeup view of the hydra, for example). A few photos were taken using the macro (close focus) mode of a digital camera. Finally, a few images were taken with our Canon digital camera held up to the eye piece of a dissecting microscope. The Canon digital camera has also been very useful for recording site conditions and student images for classroom and school slideshow.

As we continued classifying organims from our test site, we also began wondering what macroinvertebrates lived in other freshwater habitats in the area. For several years, hydra were brought into the classroom from a local lake. We noticed other organisms in the water, as well, such as scuds, planaria, and an occassional damselfly. A student was visiting a local ditch and brought in some snails and aquatic sowbugs. We release fry as part of our Salmon In The Classroom project (sponsored by the Clark County PUD) into Salmon Creek, near Hockinson, WA. So we collected macros from there and compared them to what we found at Lewisville Park, on the East Fork of the Lewis River. Judy Bufford (see above) told us about Tiger Lily pond, and a sample was collected. We examined this back in the classroom. Along the way, the pictures have become a visual record of what we've found. There is considerable diversity in the unseen, overlooked aquatic world that we drive by each day on our way to school or to work. What more is out there? And, what can it tell us about the health of our local streams, ponds, and lakes? These are questions that can keep us investigating, recording, and sharing our findings.

Michael Clapp
CAM 7/8 science teacher
Battle Ground SD
Battle Ground, WA