The day started out cool and cloudy so few volunteers showed up for Benzie Conservation District's start of its fourth year doing macroinvertebrate surveys in Benzie County. John Truchan and Gerald Wilgus worked taking samples from Reynolds Road, Veteran's Park, and Indian Hill Road. The water level was the lowest for those locations in almost a year and a half and that made the wading easier for accurate collecting.
The insect identification is now complete and the MiCorps (Michigan Clean Water Corps) stream indexes have been calculated. The more families of macroinvertebrates that require a good quality environment in the samples, the higher the scores. All sites were above the threshold score of 48 for an excellent Stream Quality Index and ranged from 48.3 to 54.0.
The Platte River supports a nice diversity of macroinvertebrates at the base of the food chain upon which the life of the river depends.