#77 Winter Stoneflies Equal Good Water
In the midst of winter, there are bugs in the stream that are alive and well – and some, even, are hatching out to become insects, having found their aquatic niche at a time when no others compete. During StreamWatch sampling on the upper Doyle’s, we find several families of winter stoneflies, and this points to healthy headwaters here.
This show originally aired on February 21, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net.
February 21, 2008
The upper Doyles River, like most headwater streams in the Rivanna watershed, is about as pristine as they come. The waters that collect from springs and drainages of the land that is protected by Shenandoah National Park do not suffer the assaults of sediment and runoff that challenge the health of streams at lower elevations. For this reason, the community based water monitoring program, StreamWatch, has chosen a spot high on the Doyles as one of several headwater streams that will be used during the next few years as “reference streams” – a standard of “as good as it gets in our watershed” — against which other tributaries of the Rivanna will be evaluated.
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