Analysis of stream types in Klamath Network parks based on physical habitat and chemical characters

Dinger, Eric

doi:10.36967/2306085

This is the first “Analysis and Synthesis” report required by the Klamath Inventory and Monitoring Network’s stream monitoring protocol. This report synthesizes the physical and chemical attributes of streams surveyed by the Klamath Network between 2011 and 2018 in the following parks: Crater Lake National Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, Redwood National and State Parks, and Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve). Where possible, it categorizes individual streams into groups using multivariate exploratory analyses and assigns statistical significance to the groups via Similarity Profile analyses. Streams are sorted into similar groups for eight different metric categories: Channel Morphology (e.g., bank angle, width, depth, etc.), Habitat Complexity (amount and types of cover), Large Woody Debris (categories of length and diameter of fallen wood), Riparian Characters (e.g., percent cover of tree, shrub, and groundcover types), Slope and Sinuosity, Stream Substrate (e.g., percent fine substrate, median substrate size), Water Chemistry (e.g., nutrients and salts), and Water Quality (e.g., dissolved oxygen, turbidity). Secondary to the categorization of streams within each park, the streams are compared among parks to identify which parks may have similar streams. Similar streams potentially share both common stressors and common management practices for resource management. The analyses in this report form the foundation of future work; they are “basic” results. Follow-up work will use these basic results more fully, such as for analyses that incorporate biological data and support trend reports. The main body of the report presents a high-level overview of individual park results and inter-park comparisons. The appendices present full results for each park, including numerous figures and maps. Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve results are limited by small sample size (n = 3) and the hand-selected sampling scheme we used instead of a probabilistic sampling scheme. However, including Oregon Caves’ sites in this analysis puts them into a larger network context.

Analysis of stream types in Klamath Network parks based on physical habitat and chemical characters

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