Join our Regional Land Trust Fellow, Clara, for a morning of sampling our stream for macroinvertebrates at Mill Brook Preserve!

Clara will show how to use nets to collect small stream organisms and sort them for observation and identification. We will discuss how macroinvertebrates indicate water quality, making their presence or absence helpful for assessing the health of streams like Mill Brook.

We will also discuss how you can contribute to an important community science project through Maine Audubon, the Marsh and Stream Explorers, which acts as a screening tool for DEP’s water quality assessments.

We will meet at the parking area for the Northern Trailhead and take a short walk from there. Please wear comfortable clothing and shoes that you don’t mind getting wet. Waders or muck boots are recommended! Be prepared to wade into shallow water and handle the macroinvertebrates if you’re comfortable doing so.

To learn more about the Marsh and Stream Explorers program as a citizen science tool, visit Maine Audubon’s website here. They provide online training, identification guides, maps of local streams, and options for online data uploading.