Interim Policy for Barrier Placement
To reduce costs and increase efficacy of sea lamprey control, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC) is considering constructing low-head barrier dams on numerous Great Lakes streams. These barriers will block the spawning migration of sea lamprey, eliminating the need for chemical treatments of the stream, but may also affect stream fish communities by limiting movement of non-target species. Although it appears these barriers have little effect on larger jumping species, the effects on resident fish and non-game species are less certain.
To address concerns about non-target species, the GLFC developed an interim policy for barrier placement. The policy seeks to ensure no regional loss of fish species due to barrier placement. Former student Katherine Smith's Master’s research was part of a collaborative project involving Michigan State University, the University of Guelph, and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans to develop methods for ensuring barrier policy compliance.
As part of this larger project, the Jones lab was to develop a sampling protocol for efficiently and accurately assessing species richness in Great Lakes watershed. The three main objectives were to examine (1) sampling effort requirements for detecting a given percentage of the estimated number of species in the watershed, (2) strategies to increase the efficiency of species inventories, and (3) adequacy of exiting survey data for characterizing species composition in Great Lakes streams.
This research showed that sampling effort requirements increased exponentially as the targeted percentage of estimated species richness rose. At the stream reach level, sampling an intermediate length of stream (12 to 18 stream widths in length) maximized rates of species accumulation. At the watershed level, allocating sampling effort to higher-order sections of the watershed increased rates of species accumulation, however, headwater species were likely to be consistently missed when more than 70 % of sampling effort was allocated to higher-order strata. Historical species lists compiled from multiple, repeated surveys contained more species than our field lists, but when historical lists were compiled from few one-time surveys only, these lists included considerably fewer species than our field lists. In addition, historical species lists may contain errors and older lists may not reflect the current species composition of the stream.
After completion of Katherine's Masters research, we were asked by the GLFC to develop a standard protocol for assessing fish species composition in streams being considered for barrier placement. This protocol has now been adopted by the US FWS and is being adapted by the DFO for use in the the U.S. and Canada respectively.
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