Resources
Materials and Tools
The following companies host web sites or have catalogues available for use in ordering monitoring supplies. It is a good idea to begin with $500 to $1000 seed money to order supplies for monitoring. Financial assistance and funding is available to monitoring groups.
Ben Meadows has a catalogue featuring physical monitoring tools.
HACH Company provides a catalogue of chemical water testing kits and supplies
Carolina Biological Supply has a good selection of monitoring kits that are especially useful if using volunteer monitoring with school students.
Forestry Supply provides a wide selection of outdoor gear and physical monitoring supplies.
Wildlife Supply Company (Wildco) carries a wide range of physical and biological monitoring equipment for purchase and use by various groups including volunteer monitoring organizations.
CHEMetrics has a free catalogue available providing easy to use chemical testing kits and equipment.
Information
Biological Surveys provides a general overview on biological monitoring as well as directions on various sample techniques.
Handbook for Water Quality Analysis of Western Pennsylvania Waterways Prepared by: Chris Resek, Mark L. Lord, James O. Palmer: Creek Connections, 1999.
The EPA's site on Bioassessment and biocriteria provides general information on biological water quality assessment and its uses.
Monitoring Water Quality from EPA's Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds (OWOW)
Biological indicators of watershed health from EPA
Standard Procedures for Water Quality Analysis
Volunteer Stream Monitoring: A Methods Manual
An introduction to the Aquatic Insects of North America. by R. M. Merritt and K. W. Cummins (1984) Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company
Aquatic Entomology by W. P. McCafferty(1981) Jones and Bartlett Publishing Company: Boston.
Freshwater Biomonitoring and Benthic Macroinvertebrates. by D. M. Rosenburg and V. H. Resh (1993) Chapman and Hall: New York.
Fresh Water Invertebrates of the United States. by R.W. Pennak (1989) John Wiley and Sons, Inc: New York.
Rapid Bioassessment Protocols for Use in Streams and Rivers - Benthic Macroinvertebrates and Fish. US EPA
Field Manual for Water Quality Monitoring (4th Ed.) by M.K. Mitchell and W.B. Stapp (1990) Thomas-Shore, Inc: Dexter.
Macroinvertebrate Guides
These web pages provide other guides to macroinvertebrate identification and pollution tolerance.
Kentucky State University has a page dedicated to explaining Biological and chemical monitoring methods, as well as an online guide to identifying aquatic insects.
THE STREAM STUDY is sponsored by the Save Our Streams Program of the Izaak Walton League. It provides information on macroinvertebrate identification and collection methods.
Lackawanna River Corridor Association Macroinvertebrate Guide provides a quick overview of macroinvertebrate identification with color pictures.
Earth Force provides a Benthic Monitoring Guide with information on macro identification, collection and related links.
Education
For education related resources on water monitoring, please
visit the education
page.