2000 December Biocriteria Meeting - Lawrence, Kansas
For Habitat Assessment Workshop Participants: Some questions to think about (not an exhaustive list!)
Do you use more than one method for habitat assessment? If so, what is their relationship in terms of independence, thoroughness, speed, and repeatability, and how do you select which to use in a particular case?
Is at least one of your methods one used at a national scale (NAWQA, EMAP, RBP)? If so, have you made any additions or modifications?
Is at least one of your methods a "custom" method used only by your agency?
Do you monitor both wadeable and nonwadeable streams? How do methods differ?
What are the stream populations sampled (randomly chosen, haphazardly chosen, listed as impacted, handpicked as impacted, handpicked as reference quality)?
If you use handpicked streams, who chooses them?
What is your sampling interval (annual, every five years, etc.) for different classes of streams?
How many years of data do you have?
If you do long-term monitoring, how do you perform the comparisons (analysis)?
Are biotic sampling and water chemistry sampling performed on the same trips and/or by the same teams that perform habitat assessment?
What is your training period for field workers?
Do you have written protocols for field collection methods?
Do you have written protocols for QA/QC?
Do you compile data collected by other agencies for inclusion in your dataset? Do you submit your own data to any agencies for inclusion in their dataset?
Do your methods use quantitative measurements, qualitative scoring, or a combination of both?
Which of your data are quantitative and effectively continuous (e.g., 0-100%), which are quantitative and use intervals (e.g., 1=0-25%, 2=26-50%, etc.), which are qualitative (e.g., substrate type). Do you perceive a tradeoff between resolution and repeatability?
Are there any qualitative data that even if measured exhaustively could never be reduced to a series of quantitative metrics? (e.g., substrate type could be recast as percent silt + percent sand + etc.)
Do you currently use GIS/remote sensing data for habitat assessment, work with agencies that do, or foresee any such use in the near future?
Do you incorporate any historical data (over 50 or 100 yrs old) into your analyses? Do you have access to historical land use info?
Would you be willing to send the Central Plains Center a copy of your field data entry sheets, along with a list of additional metrics that are calculated and in what format your data are stored?
Should the Central Plains Center construct a metadata database for use by state agencies and other interested parties? Would such a resource be useful to you?