Thinking 'Bout Flame Chubs

I've started to process what I've seen with flame chub distributions in north 'bama over the last 17 months. As part of this I've been googling around in search of any recent collections of flame chubs. The most interesting document I've found is "Response of Fish Communities to Cropland Density and Natural Environmental Setting in the Eastern Highland Rim Ecoregion of the Lower Tennessee River Basin, Alabama and Tennessee, 1999" written by Jeffrey R. Powell for the U.S. Geological Survey. Hell of a title, no doubt about that. What Powell and his co-workers did was to visit 20 creek sites in the geological region of the Eastern Highland Rim (around me here in Huntsville, west into Lawrence County, AL, and northeast to the Barrens of Tennessee) and do in-depth sampling with both seines and electroshockers. They related the diversity and abundance of fishes they found to various environmental and geological parameters.

It's interesting to me because they visited several sites that I've sampled for flame chubs. They found a single flame chub at a site we visited last summer and found none, Hester Creek in Madison County, AL. They also found 10 flame chubs at a site on Beaverdam Creek in Madison County, but I'm not sure yet if it's the same site we visited last year and found none. On the other hand, they found no flame chubs in Piney Creek, Limestone County, where we found them, and the same is true for Limestone Creek in Madison County (admittedly I've only found one there) and Indian Creek/Dry Creek in Madison County where we found a half dozen or so flame chubs. In total, Powell's group found flame chubs at 4 of their 20 sites. This ultimately confirms my findings of flame chubs being in decline, since the sites they visited are in the heart of flame chub territory and all are conducive to flame chubs in terms of stream size, flow and water chemistry. The most flame chubs they found, 10, was at Beaverdam Creek in AL, and 9 in Bradley Creek in the Tennessee Barrens.

This report is good work and it's an interesting baseline of fish communities. I found the report just by googling "flame chub", but if you're interested, the report is "Water-Resources Investigations Report 02-4268", part of the National Water-Quality Assessment Program.