Tennessee's Participation in the National Wadeable Streams Assessement Project

K.J. Sparks and D.H. Arnwine.Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation

As a continuation of the Western EMAP study of 12 western states, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed a National Wadeable Streams Assessment (WSA) project to assess water quality on regional and national levels. Five hundred sites were probabilistically selected from Level II ecoregions in 36 eastern states. Twenty of the randomly selected sites were located within Tennessee. In addition three ecoregion reference samples were collected. As a partner in this project, Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) collected chemical and macroinvertebrate samples at the 20 probabilistic sites and three reference sites within the state. Samples were collected and physical habitat characteristics were measured according to WSA reachwide protocols in the summer and fall of 2004. Macroinvertebrate samples were also collected using the state’s targeted habitat methodology for comparability measurements. The macroinvertebrate results from both protocols will be compared.