The purpose of this course is to provide the knowledge and skills required to participate in studies assessing physical habitat characteristics of streams. Techniques learned may be applied to a variety of programs including in-stream flow (e.g., IFIM), monitoring, restoration, habitat quality (e.g., HEP), and fish-habitat relationship studies. Attributes characterized, measured, or identified include stream regional setting (ecoregion, watershed, hydrologic unit, and physiographic province), basin geomorphic properties, land cover types, hydrology, channel dimensions and roughness, channel structure and pattern, mesohabitat types, discharge, velocity, depth, substrate type and embeddedness, cover, bank condition, and riparian vegetation. Discussions and exercises will address additional topics as site selection, transect and sampling point placement, and reach mapping (cross-sectional, longitudinal, and plan views). From stream reach surveys, participants will complete a comprehensive written habitat assessment and classification for a nearby reach. Participants also will learn to operate equipment used to survey and measure habitat variables

College Credit:  2 semester hours

Who Should Attend:  Biologists and other natural resource professionals interested in acquiring skills and knowledge related to stream habitat and geomorphic measurements.  This course is a pre-requisite to the FIS3210 Applied Fluvial Geomorphology-Level 1 course.

• Determine watershed regional setting and identification;
• Measure drainage basin characteristics;
• Take elevations using sight and laser level surveying equipment;
• Determine bankfull elevations;
• Use GPS equipment for location and compass bearings for determining stream pattern;
• Take substrate measurements by point-count and wet-seiving;
• Use spreadsheets to plot survey and substrate data;
• Take microhabitat measurements;
• Determine discharge return interval and exceedence values; and
• Classify a stream reach using the Rosgen methodology.