BUG HUNT AT CLEAR CREEK
IN NORRIS, TN

1 May 2010

 

Chapter leader and bug expert, John Thurman, treated us to a morning at Clear Creek. 

Chapter members and friends met at the City of Norris Water Treatment Plant on Clear Creek Saturday morning and conducted an inventory of the aquatic macroinvertebrates living in the creek. Aquatic macroinvertebrates are animals with no spine that spend all or part of their life in water and are large enough to see with the naked eye.

Mayflies, caddisflies, crayfish, dragon flies, aquatic worms and many other kinds of invertebrates were collected and identified. These little animals are an important natural resource - they provide food for fish, birds, mammals such as raccoon, and for other invertebrates; and they serve an extremely valuable role to humans by serving as "environmental sentinels". Biologists know what species should occur in a healthy, unimpaired stream; and by conducting an inventory to see which species are present, we can get a good reading on the health of the stream.

We gave Clear Creek a biological health checkup using the Izaak Walton League Save Our Streams water quality invertebrate index and also TVA's rapid assessment invertebrate method. Both methods showed that Clear Creek is in excellent health. Most of the "bugs" that would be expected in a healthy Clear Creek were there. Clear Creek is the drinking water source for the City of Norris, and it is critical that the water in the creek is clean. The bugs told us it was!

Boy Scout William Rogers and his father Chris joined us at the invitation of chapter board member Terry Douglas.

Stream Insects &
Crustaceans Inventory Sheets

Click on images to enlarge:

Participants included:

Brown, Steve
Casey, Bob
Douglas, Terry
Geiger, Dick
Gist, Clayton
Guinn, Bill
Jenkins, Bob & Mary Jo
Moore, Carol
Rogers, Chris
Rogers, William
Shipman, Bill
Thacker, Barry
Thurman, John
Wood, Harry

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