Volunteer Spotlight: Grant Secured for Biological Monitoring Program 🎉
Volunteer Riley Spangler
Many thanks to Riley Spangler, who wrote and was awarded a $500 grant from the National Charity League (NCL) Wellesley Chapter to support CRWA’s Biological Monitoring program!
Riley has been an active volunteer in the program since 2021, conducting habitat assessments and sampling benthic macroinvertebrates in streams across the watershed to help us better understand the health of our ecosystem.
What is biological monitoring?
Each year, we bring together over one hundred volunteers to sample Benthic Macroinvertebrates (BMs) and conduct Habitat Assessments to better understand the health of our watershed's ecosystems. Benthic Macroinvertebrates are small aquatic animals and larval insects that live at the bottom of our rivers, lakes, and streams that can be seen without a microscope. Some are more tolerant of pollution than others, so surveys of populations can indicate how healthy waterways are. Habitat Assessments evaluate the condition of physical features along riverbanks in streams such as channel type, amount of woody debris, bank stability, and vegetation type according to guidance from EPA.
Interested in volunteering this summer? Learn more and sign up at crwa.org/biologicalmonitoring.
