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Evaluating adequacy of the representative stream reach used in invertebrate monitoring programs

Journal of the North American Benthological Society
By: , and 

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Abstract

Selection of a representative stream reach is implicitly or explicitly recommended in many biomonitoring protocols using benthic invertebrates. We evaluated the adequacy of sampling a single stream reach selected on the basis of its appearance. We 1st demonstrated the precision of our within-reach sampling. Then we sampled 3 or 4 reaches (each ~20x mean width) within an 8-16 km segment on each of 8 streams in 3 ecoregions and calculated 4 common metrics: 1) total taxa; 2) Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera taxa; 3) biotic index; and 4) Sharmon's diversity index. In only 6% of possible cases was the coefficient of variation for any of the metrics reduced >10% by sampling additional reaches. Sampling a 2nd reach on a stream improved the ability to detect impairment by an average of only 9.3%. Sampling a 3rd reach on a stream additionally improved ability to detect impairment by only 4.5%. We concluded that a single well-chosen reach, if adequately sampled, can be representative of an entire stream segment, and sampling additional reaches within a segment may not be cost effective.
Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title Evaluating adequacy of the representative stream reach used in invertebrate monitoring programs
Series title Journal of the North American Benthological Society
Volume 18
Issue 2
Year Published 1999
Language English
Larger Work Type Article
Larger Work Subtype Journal Article
Larger Work Title Journal of the North American Benthological Society
First page 284
Last page 291
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