Adam Griggs

Shady Side, Maryland

Adam is responsible for ensuring River Network’s partner organizations have the scientific and technical capacity they need to be effective advocates, stewards, and managers of flowing freshwater everywhere. Adam had a semi-aquatic childhood, spending most of his time fishing, swimming, and inspecting a section of Little Pipe Creek, an unfortunate but resilient tributary of the Monocacy River, sandwiched between a golf course and the town’s waste-water treatment plant. Adam’s love of creeks led to him earning a Biology degree at Coastal Carolina University and a Masters of Science in Environmental Biology at Hood College. At Hood, he was drawn to the opportunity to coordinate the Monocacy Basin Stream Monitoring Project (MBSMP), a chance to give back to the very waters he grew up in. He revitalized the MBSMP protocol and program, and partnered to train teachers and implement watershed education programs and stream monitoring in the public school system. After graduate school, Adam joined the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB) as Watershed Coordinator, where he worked successfully to build organizational capacity in watershed organizations of the Potomac River Basin. In 2008, Adam was promoted to Aquatic Ecologist and provided regulatory agencies including the EPA, Chesapeake Bay Program, and Potomac Basin states with a range of scientific and technical services, including monitoring, modeling, program design, and data analysis.

Projects, reports and publications to which he contributed include: Development of the macroinvertebrate bio-indicator for the Chesapeake Bay Program (Chessie-BIBI), identification of numerical nutrient criteria thresholds for Maryland streams and rivers, design of filamentous algae monitoring protocols for the streams and large rivers of Virginia, numerous wadeable and non-wadeable river assessments, and a test of the Ecological Limits of Hydrologic Alteration (ELOHA) method for identifying variation from ecological flows and associated biological degradation in the Potomac River. Adam is also a Society for Freshwater Science certified macroinvertebrate taxonomist and test-proctor, and Secretary on the Board of the Catoctin Land Trust.

In his free time, Adam likes fixing up his log house in the mountains, gardening, fishing, paddling, taking short hikes from the house, and being with his family.

Get in touch with Adam at agriggs [at] rivernetwork.org.