Students and professors from Ferrum College are collecting data about water levels, the types and sizes of bugs, tree growth and more to add to a national database.

Photos by REBECCA BARNETT The Roanoke Times

Ferrum College junior Rebecca Crabtree (left), 19, and senior Rachel Thomas, 21, sort through a sample that they collected in Ferrum Mountain Creek. They were looking to see what kinds of bugs are living in the creek to determine whether the water is clean.

REBECCA BARNETT The Roanoke Times

Ferrum juniors Rebecca Crabtree (left), 19, and Annesha Basu, 21, do what they call a "river dance" in Ferrum Mountain Creek. "I like the fact that you can naturally tell if the water's clean [based on the bugs] instead of using chemicals and treatments," Crabtree said.

FERRUM -- Students donning rubber boots and magnifying glasses lay on a creek bank last week.

With tweezers, they collected crawfish, stoneflies, beetles and numerous other inhabitants of the creek.

What these students -- participants in Ferrum College's Water Quality Program -- and others find in and around the Ferrum Mountain Creek watershed will eventually be added to a national database that will study the effects of climate change, thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation. The watershed includes the school's campus.

Most of the $494,980 grant will be used by professors and students at 15 universities across the country to create the database called the Ecological Research as Education Network project, said Bob Pohlad, professor of biology and horticulture at Ferrum, a private school nestled in the Franklin County mountains. He and Carolyn Thomas will head the Ferrum research.

The project began in 2009 as part of another science foundation grant.

While the grant money is new, the purpose of the research is not.

Ferrum has one of the oldest environmental science programs in the country, and its faculty often obtains grants for research.

For more than 20 years, Pohlad and Thomas have fostered a network on a smaller scale with 10 colleges and universities in the Appalachian area called Collaboration Through Appalachian Watershed Studies. Two other schools from that project -- Mount St. Mary's University, in Maryland, and Sewanee: The University of the South, in Tennessee -- also will participate in the ecological research project.

Other schools participating in the project include Carthage College, in Wisconsin; Meredith College, in North Carolina; and Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania.

Each school will over time measure and document different aspects in their environment -- including insects, water quality and trees -- to show the effect of climate change, Pohlad said. They also will conduct stream surveys, decomposition studies and measure how fast trees grow.

The project has numerous goals, Thomas said.

Other than studying the effects of climate change, the project will give undergraduates a chance to perform research, which is a task normally reserved for graduate students, she said.

Learning research skills is a way to problem solve, Thomas said.

Chemistry major Kevin Reynolds, 19, is using the project to gain hands-on research experience.

"It gives me a chance to experience this kind of work -- field work and lab work -- so I can see which one I like," he said. He also is participating in water quality analysis at Smith Mountain Lake.

The project also will show that smaller schools can contribute to research too, Thompson said.

"We have different characteristics to how we do research" than bigger universities such as Virginia Tech, but smaller schools' research is no less relevant, she said.

Eventually, the core group hopes to solicit participation from other schools in an effort to create a truly nationwide database and a network of scholars of information, said Pohlad, who will head up the technology arm of the project and is creating a website for the project. He also plans to use social media -- Facebook and Twitter -- to allow students and others to offer up observations.

As varied as the goals are, so are the potential projects by the time the five-year project comes to an end, Pohlad said. Some spinoff projects could include a study of invasive species' life cycles.

"We don't know all of the possibilities," Pohlad said.

So far, this summer's Water Quality Program students are enjoying their contributions to the project.

Biology major Rachel Thomas, 21, said she's learning what to look for in a healthy watershed.

"You swim in it. You fish in it. You want to know it's healthy," she said.