Our Projects
Our clients include federal agencies such as the EPA, USGS, NOAA, BLM, Department of Defense, Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, Fish & Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and the Forest Service. We also serve tribal communities, various state natural resource agencies, counties, cities, private industry, large consulting firms, conservation and irrigation districts, citizen and nonprofit groups, universities, K-12 schools, and museums.
Ongoing and Completed Projects
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Springs
Springs are a unique and vulnerable habitat in the western landscape that harbor rare invertebrates. For 40 years, Aquatic Biology Associates has been examining spring macroinvertebrates, especially caddisflies, throughout Western North America.
Streams
The benthic macroinvertebrate (BMI) community reflects the chemical and physical conditions present in a stream reach over time. BMIs from several thousand western streams have passed beneath our microscopes, and no, we never tire of looking at them!
Rivers
Sampling the benthos of western rivers is a challenge. We have processed riverine samples from kick nets, dredges, drift nets, ultraviolet light traps, artificial substrates, and Slack samplers from rivers in Alaska south to the Rio Grande. We even pioneered the use of diver-operated suction dredges to sample the bottom of large rivers.
Lakes & Ponds
We have examined the invertebrate benthos of lakes and ponds from tundra and caldera lakes in Alaska south to playas in New Mexico. Projects include in depth examination of the fauna of alpine and subalpine lakes like Crater Lake, Oregon; reservoirs ranging from small forebays to Lake Bonneville on the Columbia River; and many urban and suburban lakes and ponds.
Wetlands
Among our many wetland projects, Aquatic Biology Associates has studied the invertebrate fauna in Puget Lowland and Willamette Valley wetlands using emergence traps and benthic sampling. The equipment and methods developed by Aquatic Biology Associates were subsequently used for national pilot study programs conducted by the EPA. Other wetland projects include tracking benthic macroinvertebrate colonization in created wetlands.
Estuaries
Aquatic Biology Associates assessed juvenile salmonid feeding patterns in the Nisqually Delta, Puget Sound, and the Copper River Delta, Alaska. Robert Wisseman was the lead scientist in the environmental impact study of intertidal invertebrates in the Nisqually Delta. We are currently tracking changes in the benthic macroinvertebrate community in restored habitats of the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, Charleston, Oregon.
Fisheries
Aquatic Biology Associates has generated data from thousands of benthos, fish stomach, drift, emergence and pan trap samples for salmonid food web studies in streams, rivers, lakes, and estuarine habitats from Alaska to Big Sur, California. Fisheries-related projects also include nutrient enrichment studies, impacts of pesticides to remove non-native fish, and Stage 0 habitat restoration in stream and river floodplains.
Bird Food Web
Since 2010, Aquatic Biology Associates has examined invertebrate communities in studies published in Geographic variation in the intensity of warming and phenological mismatch between Arctic shorebirds and invertebrates (Ecological Monographs 2019). We are currently examining invertebrate activity versus songbirds on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska.
Biodiversity
Loss of aquatic invertebrate biodiversity in freshwater ecosystems is of special concern to Aquatic Biology Associates. As a recognized authority on western North American caddisflies, Bob has been called upon to conduct many surveys for rare and sensitive species. Aquatic Biology Associates is developing a biodiversity index to apply to benthic data for alerting land managers of watersheds of special conservation importance.
Human Impacts
Aquatic Biology Associates has participated in biomonitoring projects for urban and suburban watersheds, forest management activities, grazing impacts, point source pollution from mines, industrial discharges, road and other construction, dam relicensing, and other forms of human disturbance in watersheds.
Taxonomy
We actively contribute to the ecological knowledge and classification of freshwater macroinvertebrates, in particular authoring papers on caddisfly taxonomy and biology. Aquatic Biology Associates donates important freshwater invertebrate specimens encountered in our work to various museums. Bob organized numerous taxonomic workshops on freshwater invertebrate taxonomy for the continuing education of the western taxonomist community.
Education
Aquatic Biology Associates volunteers to assist K-12 students and teachers with their benthic biomonitoring lessons and projects, and participates in Outdoor School camps and Salmon Watch programs. Over the years we have assisted countless graduate students working on freshwater macroinvertebrate thesis projects.
Aquatic Biology Associates helped develop the Karr Benthic Index of Biological Integrity (BIBI) in the 1990s, and the updated version used in the Puget Sound Stream Benthos database. Robert Wisseman is lead author on the standard taxonomic effort (STE) used in the Pacific Northwest, and is intimately involved in the development of Biological Condition Gradient (BCG) models for the Pacific Northwest. We are currently working on a standardized table of ecological traits for western aquatic invertebrate taxa.