Scientists are peering into streams -- small, smaller and smallest -- to snap a better big-picture view of our water quality.
Which puts naturalists knee-deep in the nearly pure waters of the upper Grand River east of Cleveland -- netting, counting and classifying even the most minuscule of minnows and dragonfly larvae.
Other biologists are thrashing about in the upstream rubble and riffles of the Rocky River and its tributaries west of the city. They're trying to determine whether dissolved oxygen levels are changing for the worse because of continuing development along the banks of streams and creeks upstream. And still others are down on their hands and knees among the weeds and slimy water, measuring water salinity and acidity and seeking specific salamander species in the backyard streams that feed the Chagrin River in Lake County.
That last slippery labor has yielded a staggering inventory of about 1,500 minor streams -- in east side Lake County alone -- that may be the only one of its kind in the United States.
These are the smallest waterways, the often-unnamed creeks and streams marked by the skimpiest lines drawn on the most detailed map of the northern Ohio geography and hydrology.
About two dozen rivers and large creeks act as the main veins draining the land of northern Ohio into Lake Erie. But farther upstream from those are the thousands of unnamed tributaries - creeks running behind rural fields and through culverts in urban and suburban neighborhoods. Each one is a lifeline to plants, animals and people not far from its banks and downstream as well.
Naturalists and hydrologists call them headwater streams, the sometimes-elusive birthplace of a fragmented freshwater flow that always finds its way downhill to Lake Erie.
Video and Full Story at: http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/09/in_
tiniest_streams_clues_to_qu.html
