A hierarchical framework for stream habitat classification: Viewing streams in a watershed context

Abstract

/ Classification of streams and stream habitats is useful for research involving establishment of monitoring stations, determination of local impacts of land-use practices, generalization from site-specific data, and assessment of basin-wide, cumulative impacts of human activities on streams and their biota. This article presents a framework for a hierarchical classification system, entailing an organized view of spatial and temporal variation among and within stream systems. Stream habitat systems, defined and classified on several spatiotemporal scales, are associated with watershed geomorphic features and events. Variables selected for classification define relative long-term capacities of systems, not simply short-term states. Streams and their watershed environments are classified within the context of a regional biogeoclimatic landscape classification. The framework is a perspective that should allow more systematic interpretation and description of watershed-stream relationships.Managers of streams and their associated resources face problems of understanding and managing nonpoint source pollution, evaluating the complex, cumulative impacts of changing land use on stream habitats and biological communities, and assessing the effectiveness of fish habitat improvement projects and other mitigation procedures. Scientists have developed few generally applicable perspectives or procedures to address such needs. Present approaches to these problems typically involve paired watershed studies, long-term before-and-after monitoring programs, or upstream-downstream comparisons. Yet there exists no integrative, systematic approach for understanding the considerable natural variability within and among stream systems and stream communities (Hall and Knight 1981). How do we select representative or comparable sampling sites in such diverse environments? How can we interpret in a broader context, or how far can we reasonably extrapolate, information gathered at specific sites? How do we assess past and possible future states of a stream?This article articulates a general approach for classifying stream systems in the context of the watersheds that surround them. The stream classification

Wireless CDN video streaming architecture for IPTV

“…Most methods rely on visual estimates of the surface water velocity, e.g., the MesoHAB-SIM approach (Parasiewicz, 2007;Gortázar et al, 2011), which considers riffle, rapid, cascade, glide, run, fast run, pool, plunge pool, backwater, and side arm mesohabitats. Visual estimation is used in the majority of methods that have attempted to operate at the mesohabitat scale (Bisson et al, 1982, Frissell et al, 1986, Dollof et al, 1993, Hawkins et al, 1993. Other approaches to the classification of mesohabitats use variables related to riverbed roughness, such as substrate, rather than hydraulic variables.…”

“…One of the main advances has been the need to clearly recognise different spatial scales when studying habitat and biological characteristics in rivers (Hayes et al, 2003). To achieve this goal, studies seeking relationships between fluvial habitat characteristics and aquatic organisms follow a hierarchical approach (González del Tánago & García de Jalón, 2006) in which the characteristics of the watershed, fluvial segment, reach, mesohabitat and microhabitat should all be considered (Frissell et al, 1986).…”

“…This lack of emphasis could be a direct consequence of the difficulty of objectively describing or classifying mesohabitats (e.g., pools, glides, riffles, or rapids). Mesohabitat description was first developed in the United States at the beginning of the 1980s and further improved during the 1990s (Bisson et al, 1982;Frissell et al, 1986;Hankin & Reeves, 1988;Hawkins et al, 1993;Flosi & Reynolds, 1994;Roper & Scarnecchia, 1995;Vadas & Orth, 1998). These advances resulted in the development of various national sampling programs that recognised different types of mesohabitats (e.g., Sowa et al, 2005;Stoddard et al, 2005;Seelbach et al, 2006).…”

GIS Framework for Large River Geomorphic Classification to Aid in the Evaluation of Flow-Ecology Relationships

“…Foundational work contributed by Kellerhals, Church, and Bray (1976) and Frissell et al (1986) focus on creating a systematic approach to understanding diversity and variability in stream systems and their surrounding watersheds. Rosgen (1996) also introduced a fundamental stream classification system that provides diagnostics for stream type at three different levels that consider a variety of stream characteristics such as valley morphology, channel form, cross-sectional attributes, and others.…”

Influence of environmental variables on stream fish fauna at multiple spatial scales

“…Streams are hierarchically organized and spatially nested systems (Frissell et al, 1986 in which conditions at smaller spatial scales are constrained by processes at larger spatial scales (O'Neill et al, 1989). In other words, site conditions are influenced by regional conditions (Hildrew & Giller, 1994), and different variables may act at different scales (Willis & Whittaker, 2002).…”