Biological Monitoring

County aquatic biologists conducting fish monitoring in the summertime.
County aquatic biologists conducting fish monitoring in the summertime.

Countywide Stream Protection Strategy
DEP has conducted an assessment of conditions in its 1,500 miles of streams through an intensive effort which evaluated data from over 200 monitoring stations.

Internships
The Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection offers an opportunity for undergraduate students to apply their classroom knowledge in a real life setting as summer interns. Programs are both paid Public Service Internships and unpaid volunteer positions.

Special Protection Areas
Special Protection Areas (SPA’s) are places where existing water resources, or other environmental features directly relating to water resources, are of high quality or unusually sensitive; and where proposed land uses would threaten the quality of preservation of those resources or features in the absence of special water quality protection measures, which are closely coordinated with appropriate land use controls.

Watershed Studies

DEP’s stream monitoring program evaluates the health of all streams within Montgomery County watersheds. We do this by monitoring the fish and benthic macroinvertebrate communities in County waters. The animals we find in our streams have survived through all the many different impacts that have occurred during their life span. As such, they are a reliable measure of the cumulative impacts that have affected the stream they reside in. Simply put, these animals must survive or die.

By comparing measures of their community structure and function to those found in fish and benthic macroinvertebrate communities in the best remaining, least impacted reference streams in the County and immediate vicinity, ecologists can measure the stream condition using four narrative classes: Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor. For example, Excellent is comparable to the 50^th percentile condition of all reference streams.

DEP prepares Watershed Reports that present summaries of all monitoring data done in a watershed as part of the County’s rotating watershed monitoring and assessment program. The reports identify problem areas within the watershed, likely causes of the problem, and recommended follow-up actions to better identify and correct the problem. Each report will contain summary information about the fish and benthic macroinvertebrate communities, stream habitat, water chemistry, and geomorphological information, in an effort to describe the current conditions in the watershed. While still a summary, these reports go into more detail than space allows in the Countywide Stream Protection Strategy, and are provided for those interested in more information on specific county watersheds.

Follow the links to available watershed reports.This study was done in cooperation with the:M-NCPPC Departments of Parks and Planning Natural Resources Management Group;contact: Doug Redmond, Aquatic Ecologist Telephone: 301-650-4367. In time, reports will be provided for all county watersheds. For more information, please contact DEP.