Adopt-A-Wetland

Biomonitoring
Biomonitoring provides information on changes in the plant and animal communities that may occur in our
wetlands. Any changes to these environments will be reflected in the quantity/quality of plants or the types
of animals present. There are various biological survey methods available to monitor your adopted site
depending on the type of site you may have.
Our monitoring protocol concentrates on macroinvertebrate (large visible animals without a backbone) and
vegetative monitoring. Some common types of macroinvertebrates include oysters, mussels, snails, crabs,
and worms. Some common plants, which may be found at your site, include mangroves, smooth cordgrass,
needle rush, sea oxeye daisy, and sea oats. Macroinvertebrates and wetland plants are good indicators of
wetland quality because:
• They are affected by the physical, chemical, and biological conditions of the wetland.
• They cannot escape pollution and show effects of short and long-term pollution events.
• They are an important part of the food web, representing a broad range of trophic levels.
• They are relatively easy to collect and identify with inexpensive materials.
Diversity of Organisms in Estuarine Communities
Biodiversity is a measure of the diversity or the number of different species occurring in a community. A
community is a naturally-occurring group of different species of organisms that live together and interact as
a unit. An estuarine community may contain animals such as the fiddler crab, marsh periwinkles, coffee bean
snails, clams, mussels, mud crabs, and stone crabs. Species diversity depends on species richness and species
evenness. Species richness is the number of species present, while evenness refers to the distribution of
individuals among the species (i.e. if all species are equally abundant then evenness is high, if a few species
are far more abundant than the rest then evenness is low).
38 DRAFT AUGUST 2015