Community outreach: We also offered educational programs at the level of adults (teenage on up) in two communities (Bocuare and Carbon Dos) where the Biomonitoring Team has a strong relationship with the community. In its initial form (now under modification), this was a three day course, with one day each devoted to fish, macroinvertebrates and habitat assessment. In each case the plan of the day was the same: a classroom presentation in the morning, practical training at a nearby stream site in the afternoon (IBIVI, BMWP and SVAP indices), followed by discussion focusing on application of metrics, summary of the results in terms of biotic health, and suggestions for further study.
Fig 13. Interns Diego Rivera and Ana Maria Arias and student identifying benthic macroinvertebrates – community outreach program in the community of Carbon Dos (Hone Creek watershed, Talamanca, Costa Rica). One of our success indicators is the level of participation and enthusiasm of the students, which was consistently high. A concrete example is the spectacle of teenage boys competing for places in line to use our microscope to identify macroinvertebrates. Another is the high degree of retention of the Latin scientific terminology and points such as, for example, the difference between Ephemeroptera and Plecoptera. One of our long term plans is to develop interchanges between the communities, with individuals from communities where the outreach program is already established assisting us in other communities. Precedent was established when Francisco Leal (age 17), one of the outstanding students from Bocuare, assisted the team with the program in Carbon Dos. As in the case of the 39