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Presented at the NABS Annual meeting, Athens, Georgia, 2003
in Large River Ecology
Developing a biological assessment program for non-wadeable rivers in Michigan using macroinvertebrates
K.J. Wessell1, R.W. Merritt1, K.W. Cummins2, J.G. Wilhelm3, and J.D. Allan3. 1Department of Entomology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA, 2Humboldt State University, California Cooperative Fishery Research Unit, Arcata, CA, 3University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environment, Ann Arbor, MI
There are relatively few state or federal programs designed to monitor and evaluate non-wadeable rivers. Many of the more traditional population and community level metrics used in wadeable stream assessment may not be appropriate for assessing these systems. We sampled non-wadeable rivers in Michigan to determine which macroinvertebrate metrics respond most precisely to various anthropogenic impacts, as well as physical and chemical differences among reaches and rivers. Reaches were approximately 2000m long, and macroinvertebrate samples were taken at transects every 200m with a D-frame aquatic dip net. We will report on 1) habitat-specific invertebrate community variation among reaches of the same river; 2) variation among rivers; and 3) how well various functional feeding group surrogates track actual ecosystem-level parameters. Results from different analytical techniques will be discussed.
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