Evaluation of a Trace Plant Density Score in Long Term Resource Monitoring (LTRM) Vegetation Monitoring Data

The Long Term Resource Monitoring (LTRM) program employs a destructive harvest method for sampling aquatic vegetation whereby a rake is dragged ~1.5 m over the substrate and plant materials are retrieved. The density of each species of submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV), and of all species combined, are scored based on the amount of plant material collected on the teeth of each rake. Plant density (PD) scores are ordered and vary from 0 (no plants captured) to 5 (80-100% of rake teeth covered). The PD score of 1 has represented the vast majority of all non-zero values since 1998 and is associated with a wide range of biomass (e.g. <1g to 694g fresh weight in Pools 4 and 8 during the 2017 field season). However, small plant fragments [...]