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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

The Influence Of Partial Timber Harvesting In Riparian Buffers On Macroinvertebrate And Fish Communities In Small Streams In Minnesota, Usa, Christopher J. Chizinski, Bruce Vondracek, Charles R. Blinn, Raymond M. Newman, Dickson M. Atuke, Keith Fredricks, Nathaniel A. Hemstad, Eric Merten, Nicholas Schlesser Feb 2010

The Influence Of Partial Timber Harvesting In Riparian Buffers On Macroinvertebrate And Fish Communities In Small Streams In Minnesota, Usa, Christopher J. Chizinski, Bruce Vondracek, Charles R. Blinn, Raymond M. Newman, Dickson M. Atuke, Keith Fredricks, Nathaniel A. Hemstad, Eric Merten, Nicholas Schlesser

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Relatively few evaluations of aquatic macroinvertebrate and fish communities have been published in peer-reviewed literature detailing the effect of varying residual basal area (RBA) after timber harvesting in riparian buffers. Our analysis investigated the effects of partial harvesting within riparian buffers on aquatic macroinvertebrate and fish communities in small streams from two experiments in northern Minnesota northern hardwood-aspen forests. Each experiment evaluated partial harvesting within riparian buffers. In both experiments, benthic macroinvertebrates and fish were collected 1 year prior to harvest and in each of 3 years after harvest. We observed interannual variation for the macroinvertebrate abundance, diversity and taxon …


The Impact Of Rare Taxa On A Fish Index Of Biotic Integrity, Haibo Wan, Christopher J. Chizinski, Christine L. Dolph, Bruce Vondracek, Bruce N. Wilson Jan 2010

The Impact Of Rare Taxa On A Fish Index Of Biotic Integrity, Haibo Wan, Christopher J. Chizinski, Christine L. Dolph, Bruce Vondracek, Bruce N. Wilson

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

The index of biotic integrity (IBI) is a commonly used bioassessment tool that integrates abundance and richness measures to assess water quality. In developing IBIs that are both responsive to human disturbance and resistant to natural variability and sampling error, water managersmust decide how to weigh information about rare and abundant taxa, which in turn requires an understanding of the sensitivity of indices to rare taxa. Herein, we investigated the influence of rare fish taxa (within the lower 5% of rank abundance curves) on IBI metric and total scores for stream sites in two of Minnesota’smajor river basins, the St. …


The Index Of Biological Integrity And The Bootstrap: Can Random Sampling Error Affect Stream Impairment Decisions?, Christine L. Dolph, Aleksey Y. Sheshukov, Christopher J. Chizinski, Bruce Vondracek, Bruce N. Wilson Jan 2010

The Index Of Biological Integrity And The Bootstrap: Can Random Sampling Error Affect Stream Impairment Decisions?, Christine L. Dolph, Aleksey Y. Sheshukov, Christopher J. Chizinski, Bruce Vondracek, Bruce N. Wilson

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Multimetric indices, such as the Index of Biological Integrity (IBI), are increasingly used bymanagement agencies to determine whether surface water quality is impaired. However, important questions about the variability of these indices have not been thoroughly addressed in the scientific literature. In this study, we used a bootstrap approach to quantify variability associated with fish IBIs developed for streams in two Minnesota river basins. We further placed this variability into a management context by comparing it to impairment thresholds currently used in water quality determinations for Minnesota streams. We found that 95% confidence intervals ranged as high as 40 points …