Projects

Operational Loss Assessment for the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho

Invertebrate Ecology (IE) is working with the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho on a multiyear Operational Loss Assessment (OLA) within the 500 year floodplain of the Kootenai River. The project area covers over 100 miles extending from Libby Dam near Libby Montana, down through Bonner’s Ferry in Idaho, and out to Kootenai Lake in British Columbia, Canada. Many terrestrial invertebrates are found in specific habitats and are responsive to changes in their environment. They have often been used, therefore, as indictors of disturbance and habitat quality.

Invertebrate Ecology has been working with the Kootenai Tribe to develop an invertebrate-related multimetric Index of Biological Integrity (IBI). Indices of Biological Integrity incorporate multiple biological attributes including abundance, number of species, diversity but also functional guild, trophic level metrics, population statistics, and landscape level metrics. To this end IE has assisted tribal biologists with sampling, invertebrate identifications, data analysis, metric calculation, IBI calibration and report writing. More than 125,000 invertebrates have thus far been identified and categorized by trophic level and functional guild, and various metrics for use in an IBI have been calculated. Emphasis to date has been on the development of a terrestrial IBI, but attention is also being focused on the development of an aquatic IBI in the watershed.