Special Biomonitoring Open Lab at the Soil Factory with CSI
Saturday, February 15, 1-4pm
142 Ithaca Beer Drive, Ithaca

Benthic macroinvertebrates (BMI) are tiny organisms that live under rocks in streams. In the summer of 2024, Community Science Institute volunteers collected BMI samples at 21 different locations in local streams in order to evaluate water quality over the past year. Come join CSI’s Biomonitoring Coordinator Adrianna Hirtler and event host Trevor Cross to sort, identify, count, and generally appreciate these fascinating creatures that are critical components of both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Through our joyous work, we’ll generate a Biological Assessment Profile that will tell us a lot about  water quality in the stream that we’ve evaluated. Trevor also happens to be a diatom aficionado (diatoms are even tinier fascinating stream organisms!) so with some higher-powered microscopes we’ll also make some explorations, just for fun, into the stream world of diatoms. No previous experience necessary.

Feel free to drop by for as long or as short as you’d like, but please try to RSVP to Adrianna at adrianna@communityscience.org by Friday, February 14 so that we can make sure we have enough microscopes and other equipment.

Please note that we will NOT have our regular biomonitoring open lab hours at the lab this week.

Hope you might be able to join us! The Soil Factory is REALLY cool, if you’ve never been there before.