Aquatic Invertebrate Collection Methods Comparison Study - Technical Report

Description: Project Goal: Evaluate the effectiveness of the ABMI aquatic invertebrate collection method (composite transect approach – CTA) in comparison with a more recently developed traveling sweep approach (TSA).

Background: Long-term biomonitoring programs must balance consistency of data and sample collection with new developments in collection and processing methods. Making changes to the way ABMI collects and processes aquatic invertebrate samples has implications for data comparability across years. If a new, more efficient method of sample collection is found, it must be assessed to ensure it provides similar data, and to determine if any calibration factors need to be applied to maintain data comparability across sample years.

Key Findings: The new TSA method is a more efficient sample collection method that provides similar data to the CTA method. However, despite this conclusion, further investigation is needed to validate the findings and develop calibration factors.