Protocol Development and Biological and Physical Characterization of Streams in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve: Results of the 2006 Central Alaska Network flowing waters pilot study
Dates
Year
2009
Citation
Simmons, Trey, 2009, Protocol Development and Biological and Physical Characterization of Streams in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve: Results of the 2006 Central Alaska Network flowing waters pilot study: National Park Service: Fort Collins, Colorado, v. NPS/CAKN/NRTR-2009/217, 30 Pages.
Summary
This report describes the results of the 2006 field season for the Central Alaska Network (CAKN) flowing waters monitoring program. The key objectives for the 2006 field season were to assess the logistics involved in various sampling approaches and to collect data from a variety of streams as a way to begin to determine the range of natural variability for various candidate biological, chemical and physical metrics. I was able to collect data at 13 study sites located throughout WRST. Two of these sites were visited in two different seasons (summer and autumn) to assess seasonal variability, which was substantial for invertebrates and diatoms and moderate for water chemistry parameters. At one of these sites, multiple replicate biological [...]
Summary
This report describes the results of the 2006 field season for the Central Alaska Network (CAKN) flowing waters monitoring program. The key objectives for the 2006 field season were to assess the logistics involved in various sampling approaches and to collect data from a variety of streams as a way to begin to determine the range of natural variability for various candidate biological, chemical and physical metrics. I was able to collect data at 13 study sites located throughout WRST. Two of these sites were visited in two different seasons (summer and autumn) to assess seasonal variability, which was substantial for invertebrates and diatoms and moderate for water chemistry parameters. At one of these sites, multiple replicate biological samples were collected to assess sampling variability. For both invertebrates and diatoms, intersample variability was small, indicating that the composite samples collected are representative of reach biodiversity, at least at this stream. Over the course of the summer, I was able to get the sampling protocols fairly well defined, although more work will be required next year to work out the kinks. Some aspects were only attempted at a few sites (e.g., fish sampling was only conducted at 3 of the sites). Similarly, laboratory protocols were largely worked out and the development of operational taxonomic units for macroinvertebrates was begun. Despite the relatively small number of sites sampled, I was able to capture a surprising amount of variability in physical, chemical and biological characteristics. A total of 84 unique macroinvertebrate taxa were collected, with richness at individual sites varying from 4 to 30 unique taxa. Diatom richness was apparently much higher, with 166 unique species identified and richness at individual sites varying from 8 to 59 species. The difference may be partially attributable to the higher level of taxonomic resolution for the diatom samples.
