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Relative Bias of Several Fisheries Instream Flow Methods
Author(s) -
Annear Thomas C.,
Conder Allen L.
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
north american journal of fisheries management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.587
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1548-8675
pISSN - 0275-5947
DOI - 10.1577/1548-8659(1984)4<531:rbosfi>2.0.co;2
Subject(s) - riffle , streams , habitat , inflection point , flow (mathematics) , environmental science , statistics , hydrology (agriculture) , fishery , mathematics , computer science , ecology , geology , biology , geotechnical engineering , computer network , geometry
Four general categories of instream flow methods were evaluated to determine their biases relative to each other. The categories included (1) the Tennant method, (2) wetted perimeter curves, (3) habitat retention models, and (4) physical habitat simulation (PHABSIM) models. The Tennant method (30% of average flow) was one of the least biased methods, but it does not include biological data and is incapable of identifying trade‐offs. No wetted perimeter methods were significantly unbiased, and methods relying on subjective identification of inflection points were biased upwards. Two habitat retention methods were significantly unbiased. These methods included (1) the mean recommendation of all riffles in a study reach where all three criteria are met, and (2) the recommendation for the single most critical riffle in a study reach where two of the three criteria are met. No PHABSIM models were unbiased. The IFG‐4 model was biased upwards for small streams and low for large streams.