Fish diversity and discharge rates in Bornean rainforest streams

Description:

TFE Field course 2020 group project. Recorded the fish communities and discharge rates along 100m transects on 7 rainforest streams in and around the SAFE project site in Sabah, Borneo.
- Stream discharge: this was estimated using gulp-injection dilution gauging using table salt as the tracer. An Omega CDH-SD conductivity logger was used to record stream conductivity at 1 second intervals. The conductivity meter was set up at 0m on the stream's transect, it was left to stabilise and then 50m upstream 200g of salt was injected. Conductivity was monitored for a peak followed by a return to original levels.
- Electrofishing: For each stream fishes were caught and released using three-pass electrofishing (model EFGI 650 electrofisher). The fishing occurred along a 100m transect with fish net blockades set up at each end to prevent immigration and emigration of fish during the sampling period. Electrofishing occurred in 3 phases, the same transect line was repeated with different voltages. Voltage varied per stream based on its conductivity and the recommended guidelines provided by SAFE. Fishes caught were identified to species level following the fish identification guide provided by SAFE and length of fishes was measured using a ruler.
The data collected was used to estimate fish biodiversity and stream discharge rates in R.

Project: This dataset was collected as part of the following SAFE research project: MRes Tropical Forest Ecology Field Course

XML metadata: GEMINI compliant metadata for this dataset is available here

Files: This dataset consists of 4 files: SAFE_Hydrology_2020.xlsx, Wilkinson2018.pdf, Fish_ID_Sheet.pdf, Electrofishing_discharge.csv

SAFE_Hydrology_2020.xlsx

This file contains dataset metadata and 4 data tables:

1. Discharge measurements for streams at SAFE (described in worksheet Stream_discharge)

   Description: Stream discharge rates were measured using gulp injection dilution gauging using salt as the tracer. Recordings were taken automatically by an Omega CDH-SD1 conductivity logger

   Number of fields: 6

   Number of data rows: 20699

   Fields:

   • Site ID: Location at SAFE, river name (Field type: location)
   • Date: date conductivity was recorded (Field type: date)
   • Time: time of recorded ch1 and temperature measurements (Field type: time)
   • Ch1_Value: conductivity measure value from logger (Field type: numeric)
   • Ch1_Unit: unit Ch1 value is measured in on logger (Field type: categorical)
   • Temperature: temperatue recording from logger (Field type: numeric)

2. Surrounding forest types for the streams at SAFE (described in worksheet Sites)

   Description: For each stream, the surrounding forest type was determined based on Wilkinson et al. 2018 paper

   Number of fields: 2

   Number of data rows: 7

   Fields:

   • Location: Location at SAFE, river name (Field type: location)
   • vegetation_type: Logging category of surrounding forest (Field type: categorical)

3. Electrofishing runs (described in worksheet Runs)

   Description: Number and d

   Number of fields: 13

   Number of data rows: 20

   Fields:

   • Location: Location at SAFE, river name (Field type: location)
   • run: electrofishing run number (Field type: numeric)
   • date: date electrofishing occurred (Field type: date)
   • time: time of electrofishing (Field type: time)
   • conductivity: conductivity of stream (Field type: numeric)
   • voltage: voltage of electrofishing run (Field type: numeric)
   • water temperature: temperature of stream (Field type: numeric)
   • electrofisher 1: person electrofishing (Field type: comments)
   • electrofisher 2: person electrofishing (Field type: comments)
   • electrofisher 3: person electrofishing (Field type: comments)
   • RA 1: Research assistant (RA) helping with species identification and measurement (Field type: comments)
   • RA 2: Research assistant (RA) helping with species identification and measurement (Field type: comments)
   • RA 3: Research assistant (RA) helping with species identification and measurement (Field type: comments)

4. Fish biodiversity recorded from electrofishing at rivers at SAFE (described in worksheet Fish_diversity)

   Description: An EFGI 650 electrofisher was used to measure fish biodiveristy following local protocols

   Number of fields: 5

   Number of data rows: 977

   Fields:

   • Location: Location at SAFE, river name (Field type: location)
   • run: electrofishing run number (Field type: numeric)
   • species: species of fishes caught (Field type: taxa)
   • length: length of fishes caught (Field type: numeric)
   • notes: comments (Field type: comments)

Wilkinson2018.pdf

Description: Referenced in Fish_diversity for classifying vegetation type of surrounding forests of streams

Fish_ID_Sheet.pdf

Description: Fish identifcation guide used for Fish_diversity data collection

Electrofishing_discharge.csv

Description: Voltage guidelines for electrofishing in Fish_diversity

Date range: 2020-02-04 to 2020-02-13

Latitudinal extent: 4.5000 to 5.0700

Longitudinal extent: 116.7500 to 117.8200

Taxonomic coverage:
All taxon names are validated against the GBIF backbone taxonomy. If a dataset uses a synonym, the accepted usage is shown followed by the dataset usage in brackets. Taxa that cannot be validated, including new species and other unknown taxa, morphospecies, functional groups and taxonomic levels not used in the GBIF backbone are shown in square brackets.