Andrea Dono, Adrie Voors and Pete Cooper enjoying a day of monitoring along the Middle River. Photo by Andrea Dono.

Master Naturalists and certified benthic macroinvertebrate monitors Adrie Voors and Andrea Dono joined Friends of the Middle River’s Pete Cooper to assess the water quality of the Middle River at Honeysuckle Hill. Monitors are assigned a site each fall and spring to collect longitudinal data on the water’s health. By netting macroinvertebrates and sorting the aquatic insects, they can identify organisms that require clean water to survive, helping to evaluate the river’s overall health.

For example, mayflies and stoneflies are intolerant of pollution, while black fly larvae and scuds can tolerate lower oxygen levels and are more pollution-tolerant. Pete explained that FOMR has been “collecting and identifying aquatic macros to the family level for about 15 years, making us one of only two citizen science organizations (to the best of our knowledge) in Virginia to do so. Most others identify macros only to the order level, which provides less scientifically robust and accurate data. Until now, we have been using order-level identification, so we haven’t fully realized the potential of the data we’ve been collecting.”

The group hopes to host a field day in the spring in Augusta County to introduce master naturalists to this activity and gauge interest in future monitoring efforts. Each time Adrie and Andrea have monitored, they have found something unique — this time, a recently molted stonefly that was white, whereas they are typically dark in color.

Andrea Dono, HMN Secretary

Pete sorting aquatic insects. Photo by Andrea.

Pete sorting aquatic insects. Photo by Andrea.

Andrea and Pete preparing to sort through the latest netting. Photo by Adrie.

Molted Stonefly. Photo by Andrea.