Adopt-A-Stream Documents

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https://dc.statelibrary.sc.gov/handle/10827/59307
SC Adopt-a-Stream is a program in South Carolina that aims to protect waterways through citizen volunteer stream water quality and habitat monitoring. It is a partnership program between the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services (DES) and Clemson University Center for Watershed Excellence (CU CWE). Volunteers play an important role in monitoring and tracking water quality while sharing information about local water resources with their communities.

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    South Carolina Adopt-a-Stream Volunteer Macroinvertebrate Monitoring
    (South Carolina State Library, 2024-12) South Carolina Department of Environmental Services
    Aquatic macroinvertebrates are stream creatures that are big enough to see that also lack a backbone. Examples include aquatic insects, terrestrial insects in their juvenile stages, snails, crayfish, worms, and clams. Macroinvertebrates live in various stream habitats and most derive their oxygen from the water that they live in. Some macroinvertebrates spend their full life cycle in the water, while others are only found in streams as juveniles. As they mature, these young insects (larvae) change form to spend their adult stage as flying insects such as the Dragonfly, Crane Fly or Black Fly. This handbook provides information for volunteers to assist with monitoring for macroinvertebrates.
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    South Carolina Adopt-a-Stream Volunteer Lake Monitoring
    (South Carolina State Library, 2024-12) South Carolina Department of Environmental Services
    This handbook is for SC AAS volunteers who wish to assist in monitoring South Carolina lakes. Volunteers can select a site on a public or private lake for monitoring. If adopting a site on a private lake, make sure you have permission to sample at that location. Many agencies and utilities monitor the water quality of large public lakes. You can choose to adopt more than one site. Adopt-a-Stream monitoring volunteers are asked to sample monthly at the same location, at roughly the same time of day during daylight hours. Samples can be taken from a dock or boat from a lake area where you can take a Secchi measurement from above, while looking down at the tool in the water.
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    South Carolina Adopt-a-Stream Volunteer Freshwater Monitoring Handbook
    (South Carolina State Library, 2024-10) South Carolina Department of Environmental Services
    SC Adopt-a-Stream (SC AAS) provides the opportunity for those interested in the protection and improved management of South Carolina’s waterways to be directly involved in their monitoring and reporting. Volunteer monitors provide vital baseline data that complements local and state data used to determine the health of our waterways. In sharing this information about stream conditions, volunteers, local communities, educators, and local government agencies can partner to protect and restore our waters. SC AAS-trained volunteers have the potential to increase awareness within their own community of the relationship between pollution, watershed management, land use changes, and the personal responsibility of each individual within the watershed to be a better steward. This handbook aims to assist volunteers who wish to monitor freshwater resources.
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    Adopt a Stream: Lake Monitoring Field Procedures
    (2024-06) South Carolina Department of Environmental Services
    SC Adopt-a-Stream is a statewide, volunteer water quality monitoring program that educates and certifies citizens in protocols for collecting water quality data.