EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article was written by four students enrolled in the Gear Up program – Ashley Fossett, Ross Keller, Kelli Skaggs and Brandon Smith.

Wednesday, August 30, 2000

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article was written by four students enrolled in the Gear Up program – Ashley Fossett, Ross Keller, Kelli Skaggs and Brandon Smith.

Fourteen eighth-graders took part in the Ohio University Southern Campus Gear Up Science Academy Program in early August.

The program was one and a half weeks in length and students participated in hands-on aquatic ecology lessons.

Terry Tomasek, academic preparation coordinator for the Gear Up program, taught the science academy.

Mrs. Tomasek had participated in a stream monitoring training session hosted by OUSC’s Nature Center and the U.S. Forest Service. She took the information she learned at the workshop and included it in the science academy class.

The students began the class by learning how to identify different benthic invertebrates common to southern Ohio. Benthic invertebrates are tiny animals, such as mollusks, crustaceans or insects that live on the bottom of streams.

At first, the students studied pictures and real-life examples of the stream bugs until they were able to tell the difference between caddisflies, mayflies, crawdads and aquatic worms.

The second part of the class involved the students getting wet in two local streams. These two streams are called Little Storms Creek and Skin Creek located within the Wayne National Forest.

The students set out to start a stream monitoring program that can continue each summer. Small nets were used to collect stream critters from the rocks and water chemistry samples were collected and analyzed with a HACH kit.

Benthic invertebrates breathe oxygen from the water and because of that are good indicators of water quality. For example, certain strea, bugs need very clean water in which to live and will disappear from a stream if any pollution flows into it. Knowing the numbers and kinds of benthics in a stream can help biologists understand the health of the stream and its watershed.

The science academy students found a much larger number of stream critters in Little Storms Creek than in Skin Creek. The diversity, or number of different kinds of benthic invertebrates, was greater in Little Storms Creek, also.

The students observed that Little Storms Creek was a larger stream and had a lot of rock on the stream bottom. Stream critters need rocks of different sizes for hiding. Skin Creek, on the other hand, had a lot of sand, which does not make a good habitat for the benthics.

The science academy program was fun and it got students interested in science. It was not at all like regular school but was very interesting. It was a hands-on experience.

The students learned about bethnic invertebrates and pollution, and that it is important for the community to care about streams. Animals and plants rely on clean water and everyone can help keep our streams clean.