Variation in a Great River Index of Biotic Integrity over a 20-year period

Gammon, James R.; Simon, Thomas P.

doi:10.1007/978-94-011-4164-2_24

Cited by 23 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…These site numbers are slightly greater than the six to ten sites found appropriate by Fischer and Paukert (2009) for wadeable Great Plains rivers and the nine to ten sites typically used by Ohio EPA for assessing point sources along nonwadeable Ohio rivers (Yoder and Smith 1999). The range in our site numbers encompass the 15 sites reported by Blocksom et al (2009) for navigation pools on the Ohio River and the 10-56 sites used by Gammon and Simon (2000) on the Wabash River, but their site lengths were shorter than ours and they sampled less heterogeneous rivers. Our baselines of 50 MWCW of site length and 20 sampling sites per river may seem insufficient to some readers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Estimating vertebrate, benthic macroinvertebrate, and diatom taxa richness in raftable Pacific Northwest rivers for bioassessment purposes

Hughes

Herlihy

Gerth

et al. 2011

Environ Monit Assess

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The number of sites sampled must be considered when determining the effort necessary for adequately assessing taxa richness in an ecosystem for bioassessment purposes; however, there have been few studies concerning the number of sites necessary for bioassessment of large rivers. We evaluated the effect of sample size (i.e., number of sites) necessary to collect vertebrate (fish and aquatic amphibians), macroinvertebrate, and diatom taxa from seven large rivers in Oregon and Washington, USA during the summers of 2006-2008. We used Monte Carlo simulation to determine the number of sites needed to collect 90-95% of the taxa 75-95% of the time from 20 randomly located sites on each river. The river wetted widths varied from 27.8 to 126.0 m, mean substrate size varied from 1 to 10 cm, and mainstem distances sampled varied from 87 to 254 km. We sampled vertebrates at each site (i.e., 50 times the mean wetted channel width) by nearshore-raft electrofishing. We sampled benthic macroinvertebrates nearshore through the use of a 500-μm mesh kick net at 11 systematic stations. From each site composite sample, we identified a target of 500 macroinvertebrate individuals to the lowest possible taxon, usually genus. We sampled benthic diatoms nearshore at the same 11 stations from a 12-cm(2) area. At each station, we sucked diatoms from soft substrate into a 60-ml syringe or brushed them off a rock and rinsed them with river water into the same jar. We counted a minimum of 600 valves at 1,000× magnification for each site. We collected 120-211 diatom taxa, 98-128 macroinvertebrate taxa, and 14-33 vertebrate species per river. To collect 90-95% of the taxa 75-95% of the time that were collected at 20 sites, it was necessary to sample 11-16 randomly distributed sites for vertebrates, 13-17 sites for macroinvertebrates, and 16-18 sites for diatoms. We conclude that 12-16 randomly distributed sites are needed for cost-efficient sampling of vertebrate richness in the main stems of our study rivers, but 20 sites markedly underestimates the species richness of benthic macroinvertebrates and diatoms in those rivers.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Estimating vertebrate, benthic macroinvertebrate, and diatom taxa richness in raftable Pacific Northwest rivers for bioassessment purposes

Hughes

Herlihy

Gerth

et al. 2011

Environ Monit Assess

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“…The regional-based reference condition can be derived from an aggregate of reference sites or some empirical model of expectations and may include knowledge of historical condition or extrapolation from ecological principles (Lyons et al, 2000). In this paper, these expectations were developed with the assumption that ''least impact'' conditions would emerge from the cumulative data set without having to choose reference sites (Gammon and Simon, 2000).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Annual variations of biotic integrity in the upper Yangtze River using an adapted index of biotic integrity (IBI)

Zhu

Chang

2008

Ecological Indicators

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“…Gammon (1998) demonstrated that the 500-m site length is where species richness reached an asymptote. All fishes were collected by boat electrofisher (SmithRoot 5.0 GPP) using DC voltage (600 V, 6-8 A) and one netter using a dip net with 6.25-mm 2 mesh (Gammon & Simon, 2000). Sampling time, the time when the power was applied to electrodes, for individual sites averaged 600-1000-s.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We calculated IBI scores for each of the two samples obtained per site per year using the methods of Simon & Emery (1995), modified for the Wabash River by Gammon & Simon (2000). A total of 12 metrics (four species richness and composition metrics, two species tolerance metrics, three trophic composition metrics, one reproductive guild metric, one abundance, and one condition metric) were scored into three categories (1, 3, 5) and summed to provide a maximum score of 60 (Table 1).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal and spatial variation in an index of biological integrity for the middle Wabash River, Indiana

et al. 2007

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Few studies have addressed within-year temporal variation of IBI scores. We compared index of biotic integrity (IBI) scores for two summer sampling events from a large river during 25 annual periods. The results indicated that IBI scores calculated from June samples were not significantly different from July samples. Spatial autocorrelation was present, such that sites that were closer together produced similar IBI scores and could not be considered independent. Temporal autocorrelation was present, but was not strong. Lower quality sites (low IBI score) did not have higher variation than higher quality sites. Our results show that a single sample of fishes by boat electrofisher during the summer in a large river such as the Wabash River can produce a repeatable estimate of IBI score. Thus, repeated or additional sampling within the summer season to improve the quality of the evaluation is not warranted.

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Variation in a Great River Index of Biotic Integrity over a 20-year period

Cited by 23 publications

References 21 publications

Estimating vertebrate, benthic macroinvertebrate, and diatom taxa richness in raftable Pacific Northwest rivers for bioassessment purposes

Estimating vertebrate, benthic macroinvertebrate, and diatom taxa richness in raftable Pacific Northwest rivers for bioassessment purposes

Annual variations of biotic integrity in the upper Yangtze River using an adapted index of biotic integrity (IBI)

Temporal and spatial variation in an index of biological integrity for the middle Wabash River, Indiana

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