Deleterious effects of net clogging on the quantification of stream drift

Drift studies are central to stream and river ecological research. However, a fundamental aspect of quantifying drift — how net clogging affects the accuracy of results — has been widely ignored. Utilizing approaches from plankton and suspended sediment studies in oceanography and hydrology, we exam...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Canadian journal of fisheries and aquatic sciences 2017-07, Vol.74 (7), p.1041-1048
Main Authors: Muehlbauer, Jeffrey D, Kennedy, Theodore A, Copp, Adam J, Sabol, Thomas A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aquatic sciences
Creeks & streams
Drift
Drift nets
Ecological monitoring
Ecological research
Freshwater
Hydrology
Meta-analysis
Nets
Oceanography
Plankton
Properties
Reproducibility
Rivers
Sediments
Studies
Suspended sediments
Suspended solids
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Summary:Drift studies are central to stream and river ecological research. However, a fundamental aspect of quantifying drift — how net clogging affects the accuracy of results — has been widely ignored. Utilizing approaches from plankton and suspended sediment studies in oceanography and hydrology, we examined the rate and dynamics of net clogging across a range of conditions. We found that nets clog nonlinearly over time and that suspended solid concentrations and net mesh size exerted a strong effect on clogging rates. Critically, net clogging introduced unpredictable biases in resultant data due to the inaccuracies in water volume estimates introduced by progressive clogging. This renders the widespread approach to linearly “correct” for clogging inadequate. Using a meta-analysis of 77 drift studies spanning 25 years, we demonstrate that the detrimental effects of net clogging are routinely unappreciated, even though the results of most of these studies were likely affected by clogging. We close by describing an approach for avoiding net clogging, which will increase the accuracy and reproducibility of results in future freshwater, lotic drift studies.
ISSN:0706-652X
1205-7533
DOI:10.1139/cjfas-2016-0365