Camp Robinson Invert and Diatom Sampling
Yesterday we met with Ed and Mark from ADEQ as well as Bruce from Camp Robinson to begin sampling our Camp Robinson sites. Ed and Mark offered a lot of insight into invert sampling and told us some ways we could change our methods to better fit our sites. They were right because we ended up with a ton of invertebrates. We also sampled diatoms which was quick and easy. Unfortunately, we were only able to sample Newton Creek, but made plans to go back on Thursday (Mar 1st) to sample Winifree Creek and the unnamed tributary. Now that we have a better idea of our methods sampling the other sites should go fairly fast. We took all of our samples back to the lab at UCA for the weekend. I'm anxious to see what all we collected once we start going through the samples next week.
What a day! We had a blast catching bugs. Although we didn't see any fish, we saw tadpoles, and crayfish. Ed and Mark helped out so much showing us techniques on the proper methods to sample. Since the recent rain storm activities, there wasn't much leaf litter or debris dams in the stream, therefore we used the kick method instead of jabs. I feel that this worked great, after observing the amount of bugs we collected in our samples. Ed was eager to come out and help us again at anytime, as long as we gave him a few days in advance. We plan on doing more sampling on Thursday, I hope the weather will be good, I cant wait!
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