A brief summary of our 2021 Guided River Tours....

We want to determine which species of trout inhabit the streams across the watershed, from the mouth to the headwaters. To answer these questions and effectively map the species distribution of brook trout and other salmonids, we can use environmental DNA. As an alternative to employing traditional fisheries surveys, we filter water from sites every kilometer from the mouth of the stream to the headwaters. We are looking for environmental DNA, which are small fragments of DNA from shed skin cells or waste generated by fish swimming around in the stream.

If you spend time following the work of the Ausable River Association, you know that dissolved oxygen (DO) is an important component of water quality. Dissolved oxygen is the measure of how much oxygen is dissolved in water, or the amount of oxygen that is available to aquatic organisms.