The DEQ Division of Water Resources Biological Assessment Branch has been sampling the wadeable and non-wadeable flowing  waters of the State since 1978. To date, the Bioassessment Branch has collected and analyzed more than 6,500 benthic macroinvertebrate samples. These collections have been obtained from each Level-IV ecoregion, county and  river basin in North Carolina. Waterbodies as small as one meter in width and as large as more than 2 kilometers wide have been routinely sampled by DWR biologists. Below are the data generated by these collections. Taxonomic data are also available online from the U.S. EPA's STORage and RETrieval (STORET) database.

All data were collected according to NCDWR Biological Assessment Branch Benthos Macroinvertebrate Standard Operating Procedures.  For more information or questions regarding benthic macroinvertebrate data, please contact Eric Fleek at 919.743.8469.

Further information for interpreting this data is available here.

View DWR Benthos Community Stations and Data

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Water Sciences Section 1621 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-1621 919.743.8400