P-126
Off-Channel Habitats of the Patoka River, Indiana
Off-Channel Habitats of the Patoka River, Indiana
Seventeen miles of the Patoka River in southwestern Indiana were dredged and straightened in 1921 with the goal of draining 100,000 acres of virgin forest for farmland. The three year project was ineffective with frequent flooding annually, caused largely from backwater from the Wabash River. Floodplain habitats are essential for ecosystem functioning in lowland rivers where predictable floods are part of the natural flow regime. Maintaining floodplain habitats allows recurrent connections with the mainstem to permit colonization and prevents sediment filling. These off-channel habitats provide habitat for diverse fish assemblages. We visited 10 oxbow habitats in the Patoka River watershed in 2014. Fishes were sampled by backpack electrofisher and tote-barge electrofisher. We summarize our results with ordinations to describe fish assemblage responses to habitat variation.