Download or read book Combining Fish and Macroinvertebrate Indices and Physical Habitat to Assess Water Quality Along a High Plains Stream Impacted by Ranchland and Urbanization written by Laura L. Curry and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Basinwide Estimation of Habitat and Fish Populations in Streams written by Charles Andrew Dolloff and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Baseline Assessment and Analysis of Fish Macroinvertebrates and Herpetofauna in the Otter Creek Coal Tracts Area of Powder River County written by David M. Stagliano and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We summarize the first year of baseline surveys for the Aquatic Assessment of Fish, Macroinvertebrates, and Herpetofauna in the Otter Creek coal tracts area. Project goals were: 1) to conduct standardized surveys and collect baseline information on the aquatic and riparian communities occurring in Otter Creek and three tributaries (seasonally and spatially oriented) prior to coal development, 2) to assess aquatic community integrity and condition by interpreting key indicators recorded at sites using standardized protocols and biotic thresholds, and to compare these against reference condition standards. These data collected represent predevelopment (i.e. pre-impact, BACI design) conditions at the local reach scale. Habitat assessments, herpetofauna, macroinvertebrate and fish surveys were performed seasonally at three predetermined mainstem Otter Creek reaches (control, impact and downstream) and three tributaries coinciding with established surface water quality stations during 2011. Additionally, we added fish sampling visits to Otter Creek Impact #2 (upstream of the Threemile Creek confluence) because Threemile Creek remained dry during all visits. In total, we performed 15 surveys for fish during the visits: 11 at four mainstem Otter Creek reaches and four surveys at two tributary streams. Fifteen macroinvertebrate samples were collected during the visits; neither taxa survey was conducted at Threemile Creek in any season due to lack of surface water present. All six a priori stream reaches were visually surveyed for amphibians or reptiles during all visits. Biological community integrity was calculated for 15 fish surveys using Fish Integrated Biotic Indices (IBIs) and Observed/Expected Models (O/E), while the 15 macroinvertebrate samples were assessed with Montana DEQs multimetric indices (MT MMI). Habitat Evaluations. Of the seven sampling reaches evaluated in the study area, we found three in Proper Functioning Condition (PFC) with a stable trend and four were Functional at Risk (FAR). Reasons that sites ranked FAR were likely due to anthropogenic habitat alteration by cattle (Home Creek {Otter_1A and Threemile Creek {Otter 3m}) or stream manipulation (Otter Creek JTTrussler and Otter Creek #16). Highest site integrity scores using both the BLM Habitat and PFC Assessment methods were recorded at the Otter Creek sites #23 (Tenmile Creek) and #22 (control- Denson reach). Sites with lower habitat scores were structurally degraded predominately by cattle use and had high associated Livestock Use Indices (LUI) (Home Creek, Threemile and Otter Creek #16-fall). Point conductivity measurements recorded at all Otter Creek mainstem sites across most seasons were above the threshold for impairment levels (>500us, DEQ 2006), and Home Creek site 1A had visible signs of natural gas seepage from the sediments. Macroinvertebrate Communities: Overall, 104 unique macroinvertebrate taxa were reported from the 15 macroinvertebrate assessment samples. One known Montana species of concern (SOC), the mayfly, Caenis youngi was collected in fair numbers at the control site, Otter Creek #22. Average macroinvertebrate taxa richness per site was 29.5 and the highest taxa richness was 41 taxa reported at the Otter Creek JT site. Using the Montana DEQ macroinvertebrate multimetric index (MMI), four of the five sites (12 of 15 samples) were ranked non-impaired (good to excellent biological integrity), while all three samples from Tenmile Creek were ranked marginally impaired. Stream sites that maintained flowing, connected water scored higher with the MMI than sites withinterrupted pool areas. Overall, mainstem sites evaluated in the Otter Creek study received significantly higher macroinvertebrate MMI scores than those in the tributaries (T-test, p 0.01). MMIs did not significantly differ on Otter Creek mainstem Pre-Impact Control, Impact or Downstream Sites (T-test, p 0.05), despite the fish communities reflecting a decrease in biotic integrity. Fish Communities. Overall, nine fish species (five native/four introduced) were identified from 37,679 individuals collected from 15 site visits (Table 4). One potential species of concern (PSOC), the brassy minnow, was collected at five of six sites. Average fish species per Otter Creek mainstem site across all seasons was 6.5 (± 0.8 SE), while the tributary sites averaged 1.75 species (Table 4). All fish presence sites also reported at least one species of amphibian. Lake chubs had the highest site occupancy rate at 93% (14 of 15 visits) followed by fathead and brassy minnows at 80% (12 of 15 visits). Fish data collected in previous years from three sites within the study area showed similar biological integrity over time. The most diverse site in the study area was Otter Creek JT site with nine species, while the most intact sites were Otter Creek Site #22 at Densons (four native) and the Tenmile Creek spring survey (two native spp.). Using Montanas Prairie Fish IBI, 9 of the 15 fish sites were ranked non-impaired (good biological integrity), two were slightly impaired (moderate integrity) and four were moderately impaired (poor biotic integrity). Fish IBIs decreased going downstream on Otter Creek, and the Pre-Impact Control Site scored significantly higher than Impact or Downstream sites (T-test, p

Download or read book Linking Changes in Management and Riparian Physical Functionality to Water Quality and Aquatic Habitat written by Don Kozlowski and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The total maximum daily load (TMDL) process is ineffective and inappropriate for improving stream water quality in the rural areas of the northern Great Basin, and likely in many areas throughout the country. Important pollutants (e.g., sediment and nutrients) often come from the stream systems rather than external point or nonpoint sources where TMDL focuses. Water quality indicators lag behind ecosystem functions, and monitoring water quality fails to identify causes of, or recovery from, degraded water quality and loss of fish habitat, the most sensitive beneficial use. Ambient monitoring programs should identify risk and recovery, focusing resources toward effective land and water management strategies. To illustrate, we elucidate the connections between various water quality attributes and the seventeen items of the interagency riparian proper functioning condition (PFC) assessment for lotic (running water) riparian systems. We conducted PFC assessment for relevant parts of the Maggie Creek Watershed, and developed hypotheses of improved water quality from improved management and riparian conditions. We then tested these hypotheses using a far more intensive water quality monitoring data set than is generally available to rangeland, rural land, or water quality managers. The Maggie Creek, NV, case study demonstrates that changes in grazing management (timing and duration) resulted in improved stream functionality, leading to reduced sediment and phosphate, increased dissolved oxygen, and improved aquatic habitat. It also demonstrates that monitoring for water quality by monitoring water chemistry requires unaffordable frequency and generates highly variable data that obscures relevant issues while it fails to monitor drivers of system collapse or recovery. Thus water chemistry monitoring fails to timely inform management of impairment risk or the trend from management actions. We suggest that published protocols for monitoring multiple indicators of riparian functions are more relevant, timely, and less expensive.

Download or read book Fish Habitat in Freshwater Streams written by and published by UCANR Publications. This book was released on with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Models that Predict Standing Crop of Stream Fish from Habitat Variables written by Kurt D. Fausch and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We reviewed mathematical models that predict standing crop of stream fish (number or biomass per unit area or length of stream) from measurable habitat variables and classified them by the types of independent habitat variables found significant, by mathematical structure, and by model quality. Habitat variables were of three types and were measured on different scales in relation to stream channels: variables of drainage basins were measured on the coarsest scale from topographic maps; channel-morphometry and flow variables were measured in the field along transects perpendicular to flow; and habitat-structure, biological, physical, and chemical variables were measured on the finest scale in the field. We grouped the 99 reviewed models by the types of independent variables found significant during model development: (A) primarily drainage basin (5 models), (8) primarily channel morphometry and flow (16 models), (C) primarily habitat structure, biological, physical, and chemical (25 models), (D) a combination of several types of variables (39 models), and (E) tests of weighted usable area as a habitat model (14 models. Most models were linear or multiple linear regressions, or correlations, but a few were curvilinear functions (exponential or power). Some used multivariate techniques (principal components or factor analysis), and some combined independent variables into one or more indices. We judged model quality based on simple criteria of precision and generality: coefficient of determination, sample size, and degrees of freedom. Most models were based on data sets of fewer than 20 observations and, thus, also had fewer than 20 degrees of freedom. Most models with coefficients of determination of greater than 0.75 had fewer than 20 degrees of freedom, which led us to conclude that relatively precise models often lacked generality. We found that sound statistical procedures were often overlooked or were minimized during development of many models. Frequent problems were too small a sample size, possible bias caused by error in measuring habitat variables, using poor methods for choosing the best model, not testing models, using models based on observational data to predict standing crop, and making unrealistic assumptions about capture probabilities when estimating standing crop. The major biological assumptionthat the fish population was limited by habitat rather than fishing mortality, interspecific competition, or predationusually was not addressed. We found five main ways stream-fish-habitat models are used in fishery management. To be useful for analyzing land management alternatives, models must include variables affected by management and be specific for a homogeneous area of land.

Download or read book Baseline Assessments for Fish Macroinvertebrates and Herpetofauna in the Headwaters of Otter and Hanging Woman Creeks Within the Tongue Powder CBNG Area written by David M. Stagliano and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report summarizes the first year of activities on the Aquatic Baseline Assessment for Fish, Macroinvertebrates, and Herpetofauna in the Headwaters of Otter and Hanging Woman Creeks. Project goals include: 1) to survey and collect baseline information about the aquatic communities occurring in the Northwestern Great Plains Intermittent Stream ecological systems within unsurveyed portions of the headwaters of these two streams prior to CBNG development; and 2) to assess aquatic community integrity by identifying and interpreting key community indicators found at the sites using standardized protocols and biotic thresholds, and to compare these against reference condition standards at the watershed level and local reach scale. Habitat assessments, water quality measurements, herpetofauna, macroinvertebrate and/or fish surveys were performed at 20 predetermined lotic (stream channel) reaches (per conversation with J. Chaffin). These included sites on upper Otter and Hanging Woman Creeks, Trail and Bear Creeks and any tributaries containing suitable aquatic habitats. In total, we evaluated 87 stream reaches, of which 27 were dry reaches or ephemeral tributaries. Sixty stream reaches were seined or dip-netted for fish, of these, only 12 sites contained fish while 37 sites contained amphibians. Biological community integrity was calculated at 12 sites using Fish Integrated Biotic Indices (IBIs) and Observed/Expected Models (O/E), 20 sites were assessed with macroinvertebrate multi-metrics (MT MMI). The Northwestern Great Plains Intermittent Prairie Stream ecological system, which dominates this region, may not always contain fish, but is an important breeding and rearing areas for many species of amphibians and reptiles.

Download or read book A Technique for Sampling General Fish Habitat Characteristics of Streams written by Roscoe B. Herrington and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Habitat Suitability Index Models written by Robert F. Raleigh and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Rapid Bioassessment Protocols for Use in Streams and Rivers written by and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Water Quality Physical Habitat and Fish community Composition in Streams in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area Minnesota 1997 98 written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Concordance Among Fish and Macroinvertebrates Environmental Filters and Restoration in Small Tributaries written by Amelia T. McReynolds and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Small tributaries to the Great Lakes are threatened by intensifying land use, barriers to fish movement, and the resulting degradation of water quality and aquatic communities. Recently, restoration efforts have turned to these small but numerous streams as a target which may respond relatively quickly and positively to actions across the watershed. In lower Green Bay, Lake Michigan, small tributaries are scattered across a patchwork of agriculture, developed land, and forest, and have been impacted by landscape-scale stressors. Large-scale collaborative restoration efforts have identified them as a potentially valuable habitat for macroinvertebrates and fish which could play a role in the restoration of the lower Fox River-Green Bay as a system. However, it is unclear how fish and macroinvertebrate communities vary throughout this set of tributaries, and how they are shaped by dynamic environmental conditions. Given this uncertainty, it is difficult to prescribe restoration actions effectively. The first chapter of this thesis will identify environmental variables at several spatial scales that shape fish and macroinvertebrate communities and describe the concordance between these two communities at eighteen stream reaches. Two years of monitoring efforts inform this analysis while revealing strong spatial and temporal variation in stream conditions. Fish and macroinvertebrate communities respond to many of the same environmental variables at multiple spatial scales, exhibiting community concordance which is influenced by connectivity and tributary-specific environmental conditions. In the second chapter, results of this study and prior research in small tributaries to Green Bay will be used with a synthesis of the literature to make restoration recommendations. Many of the same central principles used to guide restoration in dendritic streams may be adapted and applied to small tributaries, given sufficient knowledge of each unique tributary system.

Download or read book Assessment of Effects of Altered Stream Flow Characteristics on Fish and Wildlife written by and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Impacts of Land Use Disturbance on Fish and Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Assemblages in the Nolichucky River Watershed written by Hayley Sonia Gotwald and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Southern Appalachian watersheds of the United States are negatively affected by pesticides and fertilizers used in row crop agriculture. The objective was to determine if the amount of row crops is connected to changes in aquatic biotic assemblages draining the Nolichucky River watershed in east Tennessee. The hypothesis was the amount of row crops will negatively correlate with indices of biotic integrity (IBI) metrics for fish and benthic macroinvertebrates indicating healthy aquatic communities. For 18 sample sites in 2014 and 2015, IBI metrics were calculated. Water quality and elevation measurements were made before conducting IBIs. To assess changes in and amounts of land use/land cover (LULC), maps from 1999 to 2014 were produced with Landsat satellite imagery. Pollutant estimates (sediment, phosphorus, and nitrogen) were calculated using the Soil & Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. The area of row crops increased since 1999 (39 km2 in 1999 to 71 km2 in 2014). A principal component analysis was performed on LULC measurements from different scales (local, reach and catchment), water quality data, and elevation to produce a reduced set of explanatory variables that were uncorrelated but could be associated with IBI metrics. A canonical correspondence analysis associated fish metrics with LULC types: Impervious surfaces, non-row crop fields, and forest (p = 0.04 for axis 1 eigenvalue, p = 0.05 for species-environment correlations). For the benthic macroinvertebrate metrics, nonmetric multidimensional scaling found metrics indicative of poor stream health (percentage of oligochaetes and chironomids, percentage of nutrient tolerant organisms) were strongly positively associated with increasing use of row crops, impervious surfaces (p ≤ 0.01), and pollutant estimates (p ≤ 0.004). A redundancy analysis found increasing pollutant estimates were associated with fish metrics indicative of poor stream health (percentages of hybrids, piscivores, diseased fish, and number of sunfish species) (p = 0.03). When watersheds of tributary streams are converted to impervious and non-row crop field LULC, they function biologically like the larger main stem river. Although fish and benthic macroinvertebrate metrics indicated the tributary and main stem Nolichucky sites were in relatively good condition, increases in land conversion can further degrade stream biotic integrity.

Download or read book Fish Communities and Their Relation to Physical and Chemical Characteristics of Streams from Selected Environmental Settings in the Lower Susquehanna River Basin 1993 95 written by Michael D. Bilger and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Effects of Riparian and Catchment Forest Harvest on Stream Habitat and Fish Assemblages written by Nathaniel Andrew Hemstad and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Fish and Macroinvertebrate Response to Restored Off Channel Habitats on the Lower Platte River Nebraska written by Caleb C. Uerling and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropogenic alterations to large rivers ranging from impoundments to levees have caused many rivers to no longer access the floodplain. The ecological integrity of floodplain rivers depends on the interaction between main-channel and floodplain habitats. Fish communities inhabiting floodplain habitats are often dictated by the type of habitat and conditions within that habitat. As restoration projects are undertaken it is imperative that managers understand how fish and macroinvertebrates respond to these events. We collected fish, macroinvertebrates, and habitat parameters on two restored floodplain habitats on the lower Platte River, Nebraska to answer questions about aquatic community response to floodplain restoration on Midwest river systems. We found temporal and spatial changes in the fish and macroinvertebrate communities. These changes are important for informing managers implementing and monitoring similar projects in the future. We also found a correlation where a decrease in discharge in the main stem river resulted in increased diversity in one side channel; the highest diversity was during the summer season. Several native riverine fish species were also found in this side channel during high temperatures and low flows in the main stem Platte River. No habitat variables performed well for predicting fish species diversity for an adjacent side channel with more uniform depth and velocity. However, several native riverine fish species in this side channel were positively associated with several habitat variables. The relation between the fish community and specific habitat variables highlight the importance of considering the physical design of restored floodplain habitats when planning restorations..