Biological Diversity Lab

The purpose of the lab is to measure the biological diversity to assess the overall health of local streams. The more diverse the stream is with insects the healthier it is. Benthic macro-invertebrates are organisms that live underwater in streams. The Shannon diversity index is another index that is commonly used to characterize species diversity in a community. We also used an EPT index which ultimately measures the quality of the water based on the absence or presence of certain benthic macroinvertebrates. The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water. The Hester-Dendy sampler where aquatic macro-invertebrates will colonize the spaces between the rough textured plates of the sampler. The National

Rivers and Streams Assessment (NRSA) is a collaborative survey that provides information on the ecological condition on nation's rivers and streams.

Below is an example of a topographic map showing a part of Chartiers Creek.

All the streams we went to are local.

Peters Creek is a 16.8-mile-long tributary of the Monongahela River and part of the Ohio River and Mississippi River watersheds, flowing through southwestern Pennsylvania. The Peters Creek watershed is a diverse fifty square miles in southwestern Allegheny County and northeastern Washington County. From the heavy industry in the east where Peters Creek enters the Monongahela River, to the commercial northeast, the suburban northern communities, and the still rural and farming south, the watershed is a veritable patchwork of land use types. There is also a county park, a turnpike, a landfill, and a coal mining legacy to add to the mix. Some communities are relatively stable while others are undergoing rapid development. Peters Creek and its tributaries provide utility to them all in a myriad of

ways.

Chartiers Creek is a tributary of the Ohio River in Western Pennsylvania in the United States. The creek was named after Peter Chartier, a trapper of French and Native American parentage who established a trading post at the mouth of the creek in 1743. Acid mine drainage, agricultural and industrial runoff, and sewer overflow made Chartiers Creek one of the most polluted watersheds in Pennsylvania. Although improvements have been made, the watershed remains significantly impaired. Plans have been considered to establish the course of Chartiers Creek as a greenway including a multi-use path that would stretch from Canonsburg Lake to the Ohio River. Such a path could eventually provide connections with the Montour Trail near Lawrence, the Panhandle Trail near Carnegie, and the Three Rivers Heritage Trail in McKees Rocks.

Little Salmon Creek located in Jenks Township, Pennsylvania.

The stream sits approximately 1,257 feet (383 meters) above sea level. Little Salmon Creek is a small fourth order trout stream located in Forest County, Pennsylvania that is part of the Tionesta Watershed and ultimately part of the Allegheny, Ohio, and Mississippi River watershseds. The headwaters of this creek is fed by mountain springs and is void of anthropogenic pollutants with the exception of some logging roads that litter the surrounding area. This watershed is located in the heart of the Allegheny National Forest and its mouth empties into the Tionesta creek just below the small town of Kelletville, PA. This stream will serve as a baseline for our study primarily because we are already familiar with its high biodiversity and abundance of EPT's living within all stretches of the watershed. It is a great creek to drink from if you ever get

thirsty.

We began this lab by analyzing topographic maps in order to choose sample sites that were easily accessible. A topographic map is a type of map characterized by large-scale detail and quantitative representation of relief, usually using contour lines, but historically using a variety of methods. Traditional definitions require a topographic map to show both natural and man-made features. A topographic map is typically published as a map series, made up of two or more map sheets that combine to form the whole map. A contour line is a line connecting places of equal elevation. Stream order is a measure of the relative size of streams. The smallest tributaries are referred to as first-order streams, while the largest river in the world, the Amazon, is a twelfth-order waterway. First- through third-order streams are called head water streams.

To get all of the organisms we had to take multiple samples. Before we went to take the specimens from the streams, we stream ordered them. Kick samples were taken using the D-nets, samples were done within the faster moving portion of the stream using the kick samples. We took samples from three different streams to show the difference between them. Once we collected the samples we brought them back to the lab to analyze them. All samples brought to the lab were identified using “A Guide to Common Freshwater Invertebrates of North America". The samples were counted for and recorded from all classes. Once we did that we used the Shannon-Wiener Index to evaluate the biodiversity in each stream, and ultimately the health of each respective stream. By using that index we were able to find the EPT of each stream which ultimately tells us which stream out of the three is the cleanest.

The video shows the method we used to gather the specimen and below we have the locations of the three streams that we went to for this lab.