Michigan students use leaf packs to monitor water quality

A student works on placing an artificial leaf pack in a Michigan stream. In several weeks they will examine the packs for macroinvertabrates to determine if polution is affecting the stream. 

By Jamie Vaughn

Trout Unlimited’s Home Rivers Initiative in Michigan is continuing to train young scientists in the Rogue River Watershed. This fall, TU staff has begun working with two more schools on the Leaf Pack Network, a network of citizens, teachers, and students investigating their local stream ecosystems.

This past month, students from Cedar Springs High School and Sparta Middle School have worked with Trout Unlimited to begin the Leaf Pack Experiment. The students have designed experiments studying stormwater pollution, lack of riparian buffer, excess sediment and other factors to better understand their local streams. Then they created artificial leaf packs and placed them somewhere in the stream depending on their experimental conditions.

Right now, the students are waiting for the leaf packs to stay in the stream for 4 weeks so that they can be colonized by macroinvertebrates. Next month, TU will take the students back out to the stream to collect the leaf packs, identify the bugs and get a stream quality score. The data will be uploaded to the Leaf Pack Network where schools from all over the country have entered stream quality scores. Additionally, TU can use the macroinvertebrate data to prioritize sections of the creek for restoration or to identify sources of pollution.

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To date, the Home Rivers Initiative has worked with more than 550 students on the Leaf Pack Experiment. The experiment is a great way to give students hands-on, real world research experience while raising awareness of the importance of streamside forests to the ecology of rivers and streams and to promote their stewardship.

The Rogue River Home Rivers Initiative Project is funded by the Frey Foundation, the Grand Rapids Community Foundation, the Wege Foundation, the Wolverine World Wide Foundation and the Schrems West Michigan Trout Unlimited.

Jamie Vaughn is Trout Unlimited's Rogue River Home Rivers Initiative coordinator.