Two-lined Salamander from the spring monitoring session. After considerable oohing and aahing by the team, it was released back into the stream.
Our stream monitoring team was thrilled to find a two-lined salamander at their spring monitoring session, April 21. This little salamander lays her eggs in the creek on the rocks and pebbles. While they are native to the area, we don’t see many in the creek because their habitat is frequently buried in the silt caused by eroding banks.
creek rates fair
Our netting yield seven different macroinvertebrate organisms which earned us a BIBI score of 2.4, just in the fair rating (2 -4). The protocol we follow requires us to sample 100 organisms. In the winter, we are sometimes hard pressed to meet this requirement, but this spring we got to 100 in record time!
We counted:
Planaria - 3
Common Netspinner Caddisflies - 1
Leech - 1
Small Minnow Mayflies - 60
Black Flies - 20
Midges - 5
Aquatic Sow bugs - 16
What are we looking for and where?
Our stream team takes 20 netting from a 75 meter section of the Little Falls Branch below Massachusetts Avenue in Bethesda. We sample for “benthic” organisms - those that live on the bottom or under the rocks in the creek. They are all macroinvertebrates and many are the larvae form of the named organism. Learn more about our stream monitoring program HERE.
Thank you to our monitors
The stream monitoring program is done in partnership with Nature Forward who has been training citizen scientists and keeping track of the health of the country’s streams for decades now. We are lucky to have a dedicated team of volunteers who help us monitor the creek four times a year. Please contact Sarah Morse, stormwater@LFWA.org if you would like to find out how you can join the program.
