Specifications include, but are not limited to: The contractor will be responsible for the identification of benthic macroinvertebrate samples (up to 58 total samples) provided by DOW following methodologies outlined in the DOW Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) document Benthic Macroinvertebrates Processing and Identification, located on DOW’s Quality Assurance and Standard Operating Procedures website. Field samples may be of two types: those collected from high gradient or low gradient streams using discrete sampling methods required for each stream type. Samples will be processed by DOW staff prior to delivery following full pick or fixed-count (300 pick ± 20%) methodologies as outlined in the SOP. Field samples will be supplied already picked clean of debris. Total samples will consist of both high gradient and low gradient samples. High gradient samples will include two sample components in the form of separate quantitative and qualitative sample portions. These qualitative and quantitative portions of each sample must be always kept separate by the contractor. Low gradient samplings will consist of only one quantitative sample portion (i.e. quantitative 20-Jab). The majority of samples will be high gradient samples. For each macroinvertebrate sample (corresponding to each sample site) the vendor will produce a taxa list consisting of taxa present and numbers of individuals (for the quantitative portion) of the high gradient sample. Specimens in the qualitative portion will not need to be enumerated as this component of the sample is used to collect taxa that may have been missed during quantitative sampling. Low gradient (single jar or “20-jab”) samples will require enumeration of all taxa. Please note that in some field samples, chironomids will need to be subsampled to 50 individuals by the contractor in both quantitative and qualitative samples following methodologies outlined in the SOP.