Source:

There are two main sources of fisheries studies in and around Oak Creek. The first is the presence of the Oak Creek Biology Laboratory which has been a center for fisheries experiments since the 1950's (see McIntire's historical review below). Ocassionally Oak Creek fish became experimental subjects (see Nickelson below) but most research was confined to the laboratory and didn't involve the creek directly. A second source of fisheries and other stream ecology studies in Oak Creek comes through Stan Gregory's (OSU Professor of Fisheries and Wildife) Stream Ecology (FW580) and Limnology (FW456/556) classes.

Date: Spring 2002

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Datasets and Class Projects

FW456/556 Limnology and FW580 Stream Ecology

Since the 1980's the limnology class has studied the stream and carried out group project on water quality, limnology, fisheries, and entomology. Reports generally make comparisons between three stream reaches : forested, agricultural, and urban. These reports were archived by Kathy Staley's students (OSU Fisheries and Wildlife Department) in the 1990's and are available in the Fisheries and Wildlife Library (Nash Hall, Room #104). There is no digital index of these reports at this time but they are sorted into binders by topic.

A table of fish species found in Oak Creek is available on-line through the department of Fisheries and Wildlife (contact: Kelly Wildman). It includes images of each fish type.

URL: http://www.orst.edu/dept/oakcreek/files/species.htm

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McIntire, C. D., 1993, Historical and other perspectives of laboratory stream research: Journal of the North American Benthological Society, v. 12, no. 4, p. 318-323.

Abstract: In the first section of this chapter, I present a brief history of laboratory stream research in the late 1950s and 1960s, a period that represents the beginning of the approach as we know it today. This history has a strong bias towards work performed at the Oak Creek Laboratory of Biology, Oregon State University, under the direction of Charles E. Warren. In the next section, I express my own views of the advantages and limitations of laboratory stream research, emphasizing such problems as temporal and spatial scale, the lack of natural reproduction and a realistic age structure in experiments involving animals, and trade-offs between replication and treatment diversification. The chapter concludes with a brief description of a strategy for optimizing research progress by integrating the results of laboratory experiments with field work and modeling.

Notes: Conference Symp. on Research in Artificial Streams: Applications, Uses and Abuses, at Annu. Meet. of the North American Benthological Society, Louisville, KY (USA), 29 May 1992

Nickelson, T. E., and Larson, G. L., 1974, Effect of weight loss on the decrease of length of coastal cutthroattrout: Progressive Fish-Culturist, v. 36, no. 2, p. 90-91.

Abstract: 25 yearling coastal cutthroat trout, Salmo clarki, were collected from Oak Creek, near Corvallis, Oregon, and starved in aquaria for 7 wks. Fork lengths and wt were measured at 0, 2,4, and 7 wks. Results confirm that wt loss of this sp is at times accompanied by loss of length. The most extensive wt loss occurred during the 3rd and 4th wks when water temps were highest. It is concluded that these changes tend to maintain the length-wt ratio and therefore reduce the possibility of error if only 1 parameter is known. However if the ratio is used as a measure of the condition of the fish starved specimens could fit into the standard graph of younger healthy fish. Therefore the length-wt relation ship should be determined as frequently as possible.

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