Stave River Water Use Plan - BC Hydro

Stave River Water Use Plan
Monitoring Terms of Reference June 13, 2005
the periphyton from Quadrant 3 will be taken before any preservative is added to the jar,
and placed in a clean, glass scintillation vial. A drop or two of gluteraldehyde or dilute
(4%) formaldehyde will be added to the vial and then labelled and refrigerated. Analyses
of abundance of the various components of this microbial assemblage will be done first
with standard microscopy at low power (200-400x) and then continued with
epifluorescence microscopy. The epifluorescence microscopy technique will require a
small aliquot of the sub-sample be stained with DAPI or an equivalent fluorochrome stain
(Klut et. al.1989).
Attached algae
A few drops of acidic, Lugol's acetate preservative will be added to the remainder
of the Quadrant 3 sample to preserve the periphyton biomass for microscopic analysis.
The contents of the jar will be gently shaken to loosen any clumps and then allowed to
settle for about 10-15 seconds, allowing some of the heavier sand/silt particles to settle
from the sample. Using a wide-mouth syringe, a 2 ml sub-sample of the periphyton will
be placed on a clean glass slide or depression slide for microscopic examination at low
power (100-400x) magnification. If the periphyton is extremely dense, a 1 ml subsample
will be placed in a 10 cc settling chamber with 9 ml of DDW added, and then
examined using an inverted plankton microscope. The initial microscopic examination
will be either a qualitative scan that provides information on relative abundance of major
algal groups, or, by using a counting grid, a quantitative count of actual abundance of
major groups. Attached siliceous diatoms are often the dominant algal assemblage in
the littoral zone of oligotrophic lakes and reservoirs (also in streams), and their density is
easily quantified by counts made from permanent Hyrax © slide mounts made after acid
treatment of the sample (Stockner and Armstrong 1972).
Primary production
Primary production will be measured directly by the carbon 14 ( 14 C) method,
where 14 C is inoculated into small vials with freshly scraped periphyton samples from a
sample plate and incubated in situ. After a two to four-hour incubation period at the
depth of the sampled plate, the contents of the vial are filtered and treated using the
same protocol as described for pelagic primary production rates (Stockner and
Shortreed 1985, Wetzel and Likens 1991). It should be stressed that only licensed
practitioners can purchase the radioactive 14 C product needed for the inoculation
procedure. As well, samplers that perform the inoculations must be certified to handle
low level radioactive materials.
Primary production will only be done during phase 2 of the monitor where two
randomly selected blocks will be subject to the 14 C-inoculation process. Every year, 16
14
C based production estimates will be collected, the purpose of which is to properly
calibrate the AFDW-based production estimates.
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