Tim's BugMan Project

Aquatic macroinvertebrates, stream health, USGS field work, and the hidden world under rocks.

It Started Under Rocks and Logs

I was into looking at bugs, especially aquatic macroinvertebrates, under rocks and logs ever since I first started fishing. We would use those bugs for bait to catch fish, thinking that obviously that was what the fish were eating. Long before I ever knew the scientific names or how useful those insects could be for understanding stream health, I already knew that turning over rocks in a stream opened up a whole hidden world.

The USGS Urban Land Use Gradient

One of my first projects with USGS in 1998 was the urban land use gradient study. My role was to find and collect every possible species of bug in a 100-meter reference reach. As it turned out, that kind of metric could be used to identify the health of a stream. The more different kinds of aquatic insects and other macroinvertebrates you can find in a small area, the better the stream health usually is.

Why Bugs Tell the Longer Story

What is most important is that many other parameters can change quickly. Water chemistry, algae, and other measurements can be very useful, but they can also reflect only a short moment in time. If a truck full of chemicals tips over next to a stream, the water quality might be terrible for a few days and then look fine by the time testing occurs. But many of these aquatic insects take months, a year, or even two years to fully develop into the adult insects we recognize, such as dragonflies, beetles, mayflies, stoneflies, and many others. Because they live in the water for so long, they tell a much longer story about the stream.

Clean Water Bugs and Polluted Water Bugs

The composition of the insect community can be a strong indicator of stream health. Some bugs tolerate mostly polluted water where they have little competition. Others are found mostly in the cleanest streams, like cold trout streams with highly oxygenated, cold, clean water. Stoneflies and some mayflies are classic examples of insects that often indicate better water quality. By looking at which bugs are present and which are missing, you can learn a lot about the stream without needing the most expensive tests every time.

Stoneflies and some mayflies
Often a sign of cleaner, colder, highly oxygenated streams.
Dragonflies and beetles
Many spend long parts of their lives developing in the water before becoming the adults we recognize.
Tolerant species
Some thrive in more polluted water where sensitive species cannot compete.

The BugMan Project

Because I was doing this research across more than 30 different streams throughout New England, I worked with my advisor on a master's thesis project that we called the BugMan Project. The idea was to use some of the data from insects I collected in streams to put together some type of algorithm, coefficient, or simple approach for understanding stream health that a layperson — someone like me, or even possibly children — could use.

Teaching Watershed Groups

There were already good volunteer protocols, including approaches from the Izaak Walton League's Save Our Streams program, and I used some of those while teaching kids and watershed association volunteers how stream monitoring works. But I was also looking for practical protocols that people heavily involved in watershed groups could use to make their own basic assessments. It was science, but it was also the kind of science that could get people outside, get them kneeling in a stream, and help them understand the life under the rocks.

The Accident That Put It on Hold

I was collecting data and having a great time with the project, but at the end of 2002 I was involved in a serious car accident that put me out of work for a year. For the first several months I was barely able to walk, and that entire research project was put on hold. A few years later, I realized that I already had plenty of graduate credits, more than enough beyond a master's degree, to graduate with a Master of Arts instead of the Master of Science that would have required finishing the research project. Because I had always been taking additional courses at Fitchburg State University, UMass, and other colleges, I was able to go ahead and finish that degree.

Still Turning Over Rocks

The BugMan Project was a heck of a lot of fun for the years it lasted. Even now, whenever I am in a stream or river, one of the first things I do is pick up rocks in the shallows just to see what is living underneath. I can often tell pretty quickly whether it feels like the type of water I would be comfortable swimming in, or whether it is water I might want to avoid. That curiosity never really went away.