Dump in the creek, or the other way round

On our routine water quality sampling expeditions, we have come across several interesting natural features on the various creeks we work on. Added to this, other very 'unnatural' features have turned up. The list below includes some of the interesting items we found in, and very close to, Tom's Creek at Poverty (all within a 250m reach!) on Nov. 11, 2008.
1. 1 cooler with 6 (unopened!) cans of beer right on a riffle.
2. 3 deer carcass-skeletons at various stages of decomposition.
3. 1 large wooden hose reel.
4. 1 football helmet!
5. A 'sizable' amount of used cotton wool.
6. 1 standard-sized rubbish bin full and covered with black polythene (very foul-smelling).

Other items that we have come across elsewhere (in, or very close to, a creek) are: 1 garden chair and 1 huge blue crayfish claw!

Tailwater Management Issues

Next week we will discuss the history of changes in the Smith River Philpott tailwater. The physical habitat changes that resulted from 50 years of a high-dam barrier effect, coldwater release, and daily hydropower peaking operations create a highly altered condition from the 'natural' river. Restoration to a reference condition is out of the question within my career time. However, some changes are possible.

Philpott Project has two large turbines rated at 6700 KW and a smaller unit rated at 600 KW. The USACE operates this project and has contract to deliver electric power to the grid and the electric power production is managed by the Southeastern Power Administration. In 2006 Congress authorized a Section 216 Study of operations of Philpott. This study is ongoing with state match of federal funds. For more information click here.

The history of this project and project completion reports are available at the Smith River Project website. In the 1970's the largest trout ever caught in Virginia waters were from the Smith River. The reading by Marcy Anderson and others (in Assigned Readings/Course Documents) describes changes in the wild brown trout population and my lesson will explore other aspects of the habitat. Another little known fact is that the tailwater supports a "small" population of the Federally Endangered Logperch, which would likely benefit from a change in dam operations.

Zebra Mussel Found in Susquehanna River

This story just reported the confirmed presence of zebra mussel in the Susquehanna River above Conowingo Hydroelectric Dam in Maryland. It is the first time the zebra mussel Driessena polymorpha has been found in the lower Susquehanna River.

The zebra mussel poses widespread ecological and economic threats. Originally from the Balkans, Poland, and the former Soviet Union, by the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the construction of extensive canal systems enabled the spread of zebra mussels to major river drainages of Europe.

In the United States, the first account of an established population came in 1988 from Lake St. Clair, located between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. By 1990, it was found in all the Great Lakes. View the spread of this species in the US

Let's give thanks for 20+ years of zebra mussel free rivers in Virginia.

Role of Ice, beyond Ice Fishing

As the temperatures cool this weekend, you may start thinking about other temperature-related influences on streams, stream processes, and fish mortality and habitats. Carl Hubbs and Milton Trautman first wrote about the need to study fish conditions in winter in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society in 1935. The issue at the time was concern about over-winter survival of stocked fish. Today's issues with ice are different. Managers and scientists are interested in determination of instream flows to maintain fisheries during winter low-water conditions. Unfortunately, little research has been done on fish winter movements, feeding needs and habits, cover needs, microhabitat occupation, or other aspects of life-history under ice-cover. Early work described ice formations which are as dynamic or or dynamic than stream channel form, and fish behavior. When it gets cold trout slow down and seek the cover of darkness. There are few studies locally so the paper "Living in the Ice Lane" comes from investigations of winter ecology of stream salmonids. Tom Wesche and colleagues worked in Wyoming in the early 80s on developing techniques for locating trout under ice cover and measuring instream habitat conditions under conditions of complete ice cover. In Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, Robert Mueller and colleagues summarized video and acoustic techniques available today. These techniques are recent additions to fisheries investigators but open up new possibilities for exploring fish ecology under the ice.

Click on comment below and post your summaries of the papers that you read about ice.

Sample Exam Questions

New River near Narrows, Virginia, October 13 2008. Photo by Valerie Turner.

Exam on Wednesday will start promptly at 6pm. Andy Dolloff will present his findings on the "History, habitat, chemistry, and catastrophe -- setting the stage for watershed restoration"

Here are some sample questions to remind you what we've been studying since early October.

What are the major principles of the natural flow paradigm? As a paradigm, how do you imagine this being applied to prescribing instream flows for various ecological flow components? Provide examples from San Pedro River, Arizona, Apalachicola River, Florida, Savannah River, Georgia-South Carolina, or other river.

In addressing the spatial connectivity of stream fishes, what are the common riverscape principles for effective research and management. Suggest how you might apply these principles to the study of American eel populations in the eastern USA.

Ecologists have identified the self-thinning rule, a reduction in density of a cohort of organisms due to intraspecific competition for a limiting resource as mean body size. In what type of stream fishes has this rule been demonstrated? How would you demonstrate the existing of a self-thinning rule in a stream minnow? How would you apply this rule to the management of stream habitats?

Recent evidence indicates that a Pacific Inter-decadal Climate Oscillation occurring at 20- to 30-year intervals in the North Pacific Ocean not only affects sea temperatures and drives salmon production but also changes climate over large areas of the North American continent and streamflow in major river basins from Alaska to California (Mantua et al. 1997 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 78: 1069–1079). Comment on how these finding relate to the ability of stream habitat managers to rehabilitate and restore stream habitats. How does this finding alter your standards and criteria for defining ecologically successful stream restoration?

What are habitat suitability criteria? How are they developed? How are they applied? What are the sources of uncertainty in habitat suitability criteria? How would you estimate the magnitude of uncertainty? Give one example of how you might use suitability criteria in directing stream rehabilitation and conservation activities.

A group of Ichthyology students sampled stream fishes at 200 locations in the western tributaries of the James River of Virginia using a variety of techniques and measuring habitat characteristics in each sampling reach. Would you expect the collections of fish assemblages to vary among locations? If so, what local habitat features might best explain the variation? Describe factors that may contribute to annual variation in the abundance and composition of these fish assemblages.

Two simple metrics are used to describe streamflow, Froude number and Reynolds number. Define these numbers, how they were derived and how they are measured. What is difference? Give an example of how these differ among visually defined habitat units or habitats selected by a particular stream animal.

Define shear force and how it is derived. What fluvial processes are influenced by shear force. How does shear force differ from critical shear force?
Instream flow and environmental flow – what do these terms mean? What are the basic approaches for prescribing these?

You are tasked with developing a new instream flow policy for the state of Nowhere, USA. Describe at least three key elements of your policy and how they would differ from current appropriate water doctrines.

Imagine a riverine segment with a meandering single channel pattern with extensive point bar development and heavily vegetated riparian corridor. Sketch the segment in planform (~25-30 channel widths) and identify areas of migrating point bars, even-aged riparian vegetation, locations of pools and riffles, and sorted gravel deposits. Sketch hypothetical cross sections for specific pools, riffles, runs, and glides and expected longitudinal bottom profile and bankfull elevations.

To develop environmental flows Richter et al. (2006 River Research and Applications) propose a five-step process includes: (1) an orientation meeting; (2) a literature review and summary of existing knowledge about flow-dependent biota and ecological processes of concern; (3) a workshop to develop ecological objectives and initial flow recommendations, and identify key information gaps; (4) implementation of the flow recommendations on a trial basis to test hypotheses and reduce uncertainties; and (5) monitoring system response and conducting further research as warranted. A range of recommended flows are developed for the low flows in each month, high flow pulses throughout the year, and floods with targeted inter-annual frequencies. How do they proposed developing the recommended flows without site-specific environmental studies? What are the strengths, weaknesses, and sources of uncertainty in this approach?

Stream restoration projects often involve bank treatments and streambed treatments to re-establish a vigorous riparian zone. In addition to providing shade and inputs of leaf fall, what other benefits would this provide to stream ecosystems?

“Being deeply learned and skilled, being well trained and using well spoken words; This is good luck” Buddha

Minnesotans vote for clean water, and then pay the check!

Check it out! Minnesotans voted to pay higher taxes for clean water and natural resources . . . and some art mumbo-jumbo. It is a sales tax, but that does not mean a bigger burden on lower income citizens in MN because MN does not tax food and clothing. Could this reflect changing values?

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Minnesota-Voters-2008-Approve-55/story.aspx?guid={E2C2E31E-AB4F-49ED-927C-AD82B74A7BE4}

Emerging Principles of Stream Habitat Management

The term Leitbild was introduced in the first weeks of the term. Leitbild is a German word. Its most general meaning is: ”Leit-Bild – ein Bild, das leitet”: a guiding image. There are two components of leitbild, guidance or goal or orientation and the image or action or change. A leitbild creates a shared overall goal, offers orientation toward one long-term overall goal, and provides a basis for different professions and disciplines to work in the same direction. Leitbild refers not only to a common vision of actors. It relates also to the concept of autopoesis (from the Greek: self-organization) functioning as an interpersonal stabilizer. Developing the leitbild is a consensus-building process of is multidisciplinary and uses inputs from scientists, agency managers, and the community stakeholders. A desirable process would use historical information, such as aerial photographs, maps, interviews, dendochronology, hydrologic records, and biological surveys, as well as study of undisturbed reference rivers. Rogers (2006 River Research & Applications 22:269-280) labeled this activity as the “real river management challenge.”

So I offer the Leitbild as a critically important concept of Stream Habitat Management. As we build this activity we need to build on our knowledge structure and develop paradigms and principles. Boulton et al. (2008) in River Futures offer ten very broad tenets of successful integrative river science and management. Bunn and Arthington (2002) develop four principles related to altered flow. Firstly, flow is a major determinant of physical habitat in streams, which in turn is a major determinant of biotic composition; Secondly, aquatic species have evolved life history strategies primarily in direct response to the natural flow regimes; Thirdly, maintenance of natural patterns of longitudinal and lateral connectivity is essential to the viability of populations of many riverine species; Finally, the invasion and success of exotic and introduced species in rivers is facilitated by the alteration of flow regimes.

Concepts include such stalwarts as longitudinally ordered zones, river continuum, hydrogeomorphic patches, hydraulic habitat units, hydrologic stream types, hierarchical habitat templates, population regulation, trophic complexity, nutrient spiraling, floodplain connectivity, natural flow regimes, hydraulic geometry, microbial loop, fluvial channel evolution, and others. From these concepts the goal of stream science is to develop hypotheses, theories, postulates, and principles with the ultimate goal of setting up a system of laws of stream science. Principles may be borrowed from other disciplines, such as application of Bernouli’s principle for fluid flow. We have used this principle to approximate velocities and depths in river channels. The conservation of energy, which states that the for stead flow the sum of all forms of mechanical energy in a fluid along a streamline is the same at all points on that streamline. This requires that the sum of kinetic and potential energy remains constant.

But at this point in our course of study it is time to describe the principles that are specific to stream habitat management, a cross-disciplinary endeavor. Management requires technical skills, human skills, and conceptual skills to function in planning, organizing, directing, and controlling activities. The best stream habitat managers will be those with great technical and human skills and the ability to adopt innovative concepts and ideas that are appropriate to the Leitbild.

Please post a comment here describing your top 1, 2, or 3 key principles of stream habitat management. Comment on suggestions of others and try to keep this effort up until we break for Thanksgiving.

Papers for next week--Ecolsystem Concepts

There was some confusion about the discussion for next week. Valerie and Yaw signed up for papers that had been crossed off the list. Please pick one of the other six papers to read instead. If you are unable to find the papers you signed up for please email me (bostby@vt.edu) and I will send you the pdf. Here is list:

Kaushal, S. S. et al (2008)--Jeremy

Christian, A. D., B. G. Crump, and D. J. Berg. 2008. Nutrient release and ecological stoichiometry of freshwater mussels (Mollusca: Unionidae) in 2 small regionally distinct streams. Journal of the North American Benthological Society 27(2): 440-450.--Jane

Merz, J. E. and P. B. Moyle. 2006. Salmon, wildlife, and wine: marine-derived nutrients in human-dominated ecosystems of central California. Ecological Applications 16(3): 999-1009.--Matt

Wipfli, M. S., J. S. Richardson, and R. J. Naiman. 2007. Ecological linkages between headwatersand downstream ecosystems: transport of organic matter, invertebrates, and wood down headwater channels. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 43(1): 72-85.--Ryan

James, L. A. H., Xeonpoulos, J. F. Wilson, and P. C. Frost. 2007. Land use controls nutrient excretion by stream invertebrates along a gradient of agriculture. Journal of the North American Benthological Society 26(3): 523-531.--Lee


C. C. Vaughn, S. J. Nichols, and D. E. Spooner. 2008. Community and foodweb ecology of freshwater mussels. Journal of the North American Benthological Society 27(2): 409-423.--Brandon