PacFish InFish Biological Opinion (PIBO)

The PacFish InFish Biological Opinion (PIBO) monitoring program was developed to is to monitor stream and riparian habitats on USFS, BLM, and NPS lands throughout the interior Columbia River and upper Missouri River basins. NAMC developed the PIBO O/E index in 2009 for use by PIBO, but the BLM also utilizes this index for streams in Idaho with ESA listed fish species. This index requires identification to NAMC’s standard taxonomic resolution and samples to be collected between June 1st and October 1st. The state of Idaho’s BURP MMI does not use compatible macroinvertebrate sampling methods with PIBO or the BLM, and therefore, NAMC does not currently provide the BURP MMI at this time.

Index # Reference Sites # Degraded Sites Index Mean Index SD Moderate departure from reference benchmark Major departure from reference benchmark Narrative conditions
PacFish InFish Biological Opinion (PIBO) 174 NA 0.95 0.16 <= 0.79 <= 0.63 Good, Fair, Poor

Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Montana with black dots representing MMI reference sites and a red line showing the Columbia Basin Boundary
PIBO macroinvertebrate reference sites

Box plots of catch elevation(m) on a scale of 1000 to 3000 with a mean of 1750, mean annual precipitation (mm) on a scale of 0 to 5000 with a mean of 1500, temperature (C) on a scale of 0 to 13 with a mean of 7 and log watershed area (km2) on a scale of 0 to 5 with a mean of 1.2
Environmental gradients of reference sites used for PIBO index and used for NAMC’s model applicability test

  • Method for accounting for natural environmental gradients: Random forest model predicting group membership
  • Predictors of reference assemblages or metrics: 
    • Log10 of watershed area
    • Log Precip at the point
    • Temperature max at the point
  • # of Macroinvertebrate groups obtained by hierarchical cluster analysis: 10
  • Fixed count: 300
  • Minimum count: unspecified
  • Operational Taxonomic Unit (OTU) applied: Yes
  • Rare taxa <0.5 probability of capture included: No