USDA-FS: Fish Monitoring Guide, USDA-FS:  Fish inventory and monitoring technical guide, USDA-FS

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Official Method Name
 Fish inventory and monitoring technical guide for wadeable streams on National Forests
Current Revision
Draft, 2007
Media
 WATER  (Waterbody type - Wadeable stream)
Instrumentation
 Electrofishing Unit
Method Subcategory
 Population/Community
Method Source
  USDA-FS
Citation
 Bennett, S.N. and Roper, B.B. 2007. Fish inventory and monitoring technical guide for wadeable streams on National Forests. Gen. Tech. Rep. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. ### p. (DRAFT)
Brief Method Summary
 This manual is not intended to replace existing protocols, but instead bring together all the existing information in a concise and usable format designed specifically for fish in wadeable streams. Much of the information in this guide was synthesized from two existing monitoring texts, Elzinga et al. (1998) and Thompson et al. (1998), and readers are encouraged to review these texts for more detail and supporting information.

This guide addresses inventory and monitoring strategies for fish in wadeable streams. It focuses on monitoring associated with National Forest Management Act planning and is intended to apply primarily to monitoring efforts at the National Forest level scale. Primary topics covered in the guide are key biological, logistical, and statistical issues relating fish surveys, general strategies for fish inventory and monitoring, and sections specific to distribution, abundance, trend, and purposive survey requirements. The guide is intended to be applied on all National Forests and for the majority of fish species likely to be encountered. The authors recognize that there will some site and species specific situations where these standards can not be applied. The guide will be updated every five years to accommodate new information and survey techniques.

The overriding focus of the guide is to encourage the use of randomized and statistically defensible survey standards to assess fish populations at the National Forest scale. Implementation of these standards will allow the USDA Forest Service to demonstrate sustainable development of fisheries resources and meet regulatory and administrative policy goals. A key component of the survey standards that will allow the Forest Service to meet these goals is the use of consistent levels of precision and statistical power when developing survey designs. As such, we have underlined our specific recommendations throughout the report and summarize them here as follows:
  1. Randomized survey designs should be used whenever possible and the scope of inference should be increased via coordinated sampling with other agencies and organizations to increase efficiency and decrease survey costs. For large scale surveys (i.e. > 6th order HUC) the generalized random-tessellation stratified design should be implemented to ensure equal sample distribution across the landscape.
  2. The minimum length of a sample unit should be 100 m.
  3. Trend surveys should use permanent sample sites.
  4. Distribution surveys should have a minimum sample size sufficient to detect the presence of a target population within 20% of the true frequency (confidence interval) 80% of the time (power). We recommend that the interim threshold density should be set at 0.1 individuals per sample unit (100 m reach) until regional standards are developed (Hoffmann et al. 2005).
  5. Abundance and trend surveys should have a minimum sample size sufficient to detect the abundance of a target population within 20% of the true abundance 80% of the time with a = 0.10.
  6. Population estimates (i.e. any abundance estimate that is not an index) should use block nets at the upstream and downstream ends of all sample units.
  7. Management actions should be considered (i.e. trigger point) when an estimated 20% change in frequency of presence or overall distribution is observed (Vesely et al. 2006).
  8. When using electroshocking, seine, underwater (snorkel), plot/quadrat, redd, or minnow trap techniques to survey fish the standardized methods outlined in Appendix 5 of this guide should be used to allow comparisons of data collected in different National Forests.
  9. Purposive sampling is useful for preliminary investigations, but can not provide levels of confidence in estimates of distribution or abundance and therefore, should be only be used when statistically defensible information is not required.
Scope and Application
 This guide addresses inventory and monitoring strategies for fish in wadeable streams. It focuses on monitoring associated with National Forest Management Act planning and is intended to apply primarily to monitoring efforts at the National Forest level scale. Primary topics covered in the guide are key biological, logistical, and statistical issues relating fish surveys, general strategies for fish inventory and monitoring, and sections specific to distribution, abundance, trend, and purposive survey requirements. The guide is intended to be applied on all National Forests and for the majority of fish species likely to be encountered. The authors recognize that there will some site and species specific situations where these standards can not be applied.

The overriding focus of the guide is to encourage the use of randomized and statistically defensible survey standards to assess fish populations at the National Forest scale. Implementation of these standards will allow the USDA Forest Service to demonstrate sustainable development of fisheries resources and meet regulatory and administrative policy goals. A key component of the survey standards that will allow the Forest Service to meet these goals is the use of consistent levels of precision and statistical power when developing survey designs.
Applicable Concentration Range
Interferences
Quality Control Requirements
 Recommendations: regardless of the technique or survey design, minimum levels of training should be provided for survey crews and that the training be coordinated at the regional level (see Section 2.4.2 for more detail). We also recommend that the estimated capture efficiencies reported in this guide be used when time and budget limit the ability of managers to independently estimate capture efficiencies for individual projects. If local knowledge indicates other capture efficiencies are more appropriate then they should override the ones recommended in this guide. If possible, tests of capture efficiency should be periodically conducted, especially for large projects with diverse habitat, or for projects involving threatened and endangered species where very precise estimates are required.

To produce high quality data an emphasis must be placed on quality assurance procedures. Quality Assurance procedures can be administered to the inventory and monitoring process through both manual and automated techniques (Peterson and Wollrab 1999). In addition, field audits should be conducted to ensure that field data are collected and recorded to standards. Field audits are essential to ensure individual field crews are collecting data consistently and as intended by the standards. Verification of fish identification is also required. It is important for the survey coordinator to methodically check the quality of work during each of the phases of an inventory project. This practice will pick up errors as they are made, and prevent them from being carried through or compounded by successive steps in the inventory process. Following this review, the survey data can be entered into NRIS. The survey coordinator should then be responsible for arranging the statistical analyses of the data as needed.

See section 2.2.2 for more information.
Sample Handling
Maximum Holding Time
Relative Cost
 3 - 6 hrs. per site/sample
Sample Preparation Methods
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