Benthic Monitoring
Benthic Macroinvertebrates are exactly what the name suggests – bottom-dwelling spineless aquatic animals that can be seen with the naked eye. These critters spend at least part of their lives in the water attached to rocks, vegetation, sticks or burrowed into the bottom sediments of freshwater streams, lakes, or ponds. Insects like stoneflies, mayflies and craneflies only spend the larval stage of their life cycle in the water. Some enjoy years in the water to emerge only for a couple of weeks on land as adults. Others spend their whole lives in the water such as amphipods, (scuds), snails and mussels.
Benthic macroinvertebrates (benthos) are excellent water quality indicators and can tell a great deal about the biological condition of a waterbody; the main reason why it is important to evaluate them. Evaluating the abundance and diversity of benthic species is a reliable indicator because they are stationary and sensitive to changes in water quality. Healthy water bodies support a great number and diversity of macroinvertebrates that are both tolerant and intolerant of pollution. However, samples that contain only pollution-tolerant species may indicate a problem with water quality.
Benthic monitoring is the study of the ‘bugs in the mud’ and these organisms frame the base of the aquatic food chain. Benthic Monitoring is one component of the Lake System Health program of the Muskoka Water Strategy. The District of Muskoka developed this program to enhance existing Lake Health Monitoring. Lake Vernon presently has three alternating stations that are monitored annually by volunteers in partnership with the District of Muskoka.
Each spring on Lake Vernon, samples are collected by a trained bio-technician in the littoral zone of the lake using the “travelling-kick-and-sweep” method. The littoral zone is where the invertebrates live, such as in the substrate, sediments below the substrate, top of rocks, water’s edge, and on emergent vegetation near the shoreline. Macroinvertebrates have adapted to live in these microhabitats. Mayfly larva, for example, can crawl over slippery rocks as they eat the attached algae.
After collection, benthos are live counted and identified using the eye, and then released or sometimes they are preserved and sorted in a lab using a microscope. The data gathered from the Lake Vernon sample sites is sent to the Ontario Benthos Biomonitoring Network (OBBN), a large-scale collaborative research initiative led by the Dorset Environmental Science Centre in order to compare and monitor lakes and streams in watersheds across Ontario.
If you would like more information on Benthic Invertebrates, their habitat, or monitoring, please see the following resources.
Muskoka Watershed Council
Living in Cottage Country Handbook (Muskoka Watershed Council)
Muskoka Watershed Report Card
Does Your Shoreline Have a Natural Edge?
Native Plants & Shoreline Buffers
Integrated watershed Management
A Shoreline Owner’s Guide to Healthy Waterfronts 3rd ed by FOCA
Love Your Lake (Natural Shoreline)
The Shore Primer: A Cottager’s Guide to a Healthy Waterfront (DFO & Cottage Life)
Muskoka Water Web for lake data
Note that volunteers are needed each year to help the biotech identify and count the aquatic invertebrates in our lake. Please contact Gwen Norkus at gwen.norkus@me.com if you are able to help at Camp Tawingo on Monday, June 3rd, 2024 from 10 -2. (Note that the photo shows the biotech in the water, only. You will be on land! All materials and information will be provided.)
Lake Partner Program
The Lake Vernon Association has been participating in this citizen science initiative since 2002 (and since 1991 for water clarity measurements). This is a program that serves to annually measure water quality annually on several metrics including total phosphorous, calcium, chloride, and water clarity (secchi depth). Each spring, lake volunteers head out to sample Lake Vernon’s water in four locations, and then send the samples to the Dorset Environmental Science Centre for analysis. Another long term volunteer measures and records water clarity at five locations around the lake. Collectively, this monitoring program helps us to detect key changes in Lake Vernon’s water quality.
For more information on the Lake Partner Program, and to view historical data:
https://data.ontario.ca/dataset/ontario-lake-partner
https://desc.ca/programs/LPP
Note: Photo below is of Tracey Rast, long-time Lake Partner Program volunteer on Lake Vernon.
