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PACIFIC NORTHWEST SIDE-BY-SIDE PROTOCOL COMPARISON TEST
Citation:
LANIGAN, S. H., B. ROPER, J. M. BUFFINGTON, E. ARCHER, S. DOWNIE, P. R. KAUFMANN, S. HUBLER, K. JONES, G. MERRITT, D. KONNOFF, A. PLEUS, M. B. WARD, K. WOLF, AND J. FAUSTINI. PACIFIC NORTHWEST SIDE-BY-SIDE PROTOCOL COMPARISON TEST. Presented at Fifth National Monitoring Conference, San Jose, CA, May 08 - 11, 2006.
Description:
Eleven state, tribal, and federal agencies participated during summer 2005 in a side-by-side comparison of protocols used to measure common in-stream physical attributes to help determine which protocols are best for determining status and trend of stream/watershed condition. This protocol comparison was sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership as part of an ongoing effort to enable different agencies to be able to share data and determine best measurement techniques. Field sites were located in the John Day Basin, eastern Oregon, in mountain channels that provide critical habitat for threatened and endangered salmonids. Twelve streams were examined, representing a range of alluvial channel types (pool-riffle, plane-bed, and step-pool) and a range of channel/habitat complexity (simple, free-formed channels vs. complex wood-forced ones). Study sites had bankfull channel widths of 3-15 m, slopes of about 1-7%, and median substrate sizes of 9-154 mm. Channel features of interest included reach-average width, depth, gradient, sinuosity, substrate characteristics (median size, percent fines), wood characteristics (number, size), pool characteristics (residual depth, area of pools), and channel entrenchment. Field crews from the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station determined ¿true¿ channel characteristics using a dense array of cross sections spaced every half bankfull width over stream lengths of 40-80 bankfull widths. A total station was used for surveying channel cross sections and the longitudinal profile of the stream bed, while Wolman pebble counts were used to sample substrate at each cross section. The sites were then inventoried by 1 to 3 field crews from 11 participating agencies using their measurement protocols. Preliminary results indicate that some monitoring group protocols performed better than others for particular attributes, no one monitoring group¿s protocols performed best for a majority of the attributes compared.