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Communication at the NABS Annual meeting, Keystone, 2000
(472) CONGRUENCE OF ILLINOIS RIVERWATCH (VOLUNTEER) AQUATIC MACROINVERTEBRATE DATA WITH THAT OF PROFESSIONALLY COLLECTED DATA.
R.E. DeWalt. Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Div. Natural History Survey
Congruence of RiverWatch (RW) volunteer and IDNR Critical Trends and Assessment Program (CTAP) professional biomonitoring data was investigated at 11 sites in 1998. Inspection of RW samples by CTAP biologists demonstrated that 80% of samples had abundances with <10% deviation from reported values. RW Macroinvertebrate abundance was <50 for a few volunteers and overall was not correlated with CTAP abundance. RW taxa richnesses and CTAP EPT richness were well correlated (R=0.73-0.87, p=0.01-0.0005). Species-level EPT richness of RW samples was correlated with CTAP EPT richness (R=0.95, p=0.0001). RW volunteers appeared to sample a consistent proportion of the EPT fauna available to CTAP biologists. Modeling of CTAP EPT richness from RW data may be possible. No correlation occurred between RW's Macroinvertebrate Biotic Index (MBI) and CTAP's Hilsenhoff Biotic Index. Six of 11 sites differed in quality ratings such that RW rated most sites as "good", whereas CTAP rated them evenly across all categories. The RW program will improve taxonomic training, set minimum abundance levels, add other metrics on which to base quality ratings, and possibly adjust the MBI scale. More such head-to-head comparisons will help to fine-tune the RW volunteer program.
Presented at 1:00 PM on Wednesday, May 31, 2000 in Bioassessment: Techniques
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