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Monitoring the environmentThere's no questions that keeping an eye on what's happening to our environment is important. But "our environment" is so complex, it's difficult to find features that can be measured. And features that can be measured and actually tell us something about the environment are even harder to identify. Fortunately, many people are thinking along the same lines and developing ways to keep track of factors that show us how healthy (or not) our surroundings are. We've recently come across two such resources:
Surface water qualityExamine water bugs to gauge watershed health! Benthic macroinvertebrates are small animals without backbones that live on the bottom of lakes, rivers, streams, ponds and wetlands. Because different groups of them survive under different conditions, we can infer whether nutrient enrichment, chemical pollution or other factors may be present in a watercourse based on the numbers and types of invertebrates we find. This kind of monitoring can be done using inexpensive tools like nets, buckets, and identification charts.
How to monitor water quality
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