Richard A. Cole

Optimum fisheries management policy: angler opportunity versus angler benefit.

Abstract We address a common problem faced by fishery managers wherein recreational fisheries have a mismatched distribution of fishing opportunities and anglers. Fishing opportunity is compared with angler benefit as performance standards for managing a fishery. We describe a decision rule fishery managers can use to distribute fishing opportunity optimally, and illustrate how managers in New Mexico can estimate the impact of changes in the distribution of fishing opportunity on angler benefits by use of the comprehensive planning model RIOFISH that simulates the states major fisheries. Results indicate that fishery management plans in New Mexico typically would produce highest angler benefit by distributing resources nonuniformly over sites and kinds of opportunity.

Estimating Intermittent Runoff Concentrations of Organic Matter and the Allochthonous Organic Loading of New Mexico Reservoirs

ABSTRACT Variations in the concentrations of total and particulate organic matter were estimated from 1979 through 1988 in natural and simulated runoff events to improve estimates of reservoir gross organic loading from intermittent flows. Total organic matter concentrations in natural runoff from pinyon-juniper watersheds and particulate organic matter concentrations in runoff from creosote bush watersheds increased as a natural logarithmic function of discharge. Total organic matter and particulate organic matter discharge-weighted concentrations in natural runoff events were related to measurements of instantaneous discharge and total organic matter and particulate organic matter concentrations, and to estimates of the maximum discharge of total organic matter and particulate organic matter concentrations that occurred in the event. In rainfall simulations conducted in watersheds of creosote bush, desert grass, pinyon-juniper, ponderosa pine, and spruce meadow, only particulate organic matter concentra...

Modeling the Rio Grande River System in New Mexico for Economic and Social Trade-Offs: An Overview of a Current Study1

Abstract Water in New Mexico must be applied to the most beneficial uses. Determination of the most beneficial uses, however, requires physical, social, economic, and political decisions. This paper presents the status of an interdisciplinary, multiyear study that will yield a methodology for aiding such decisions. Hypothetical, applications are discussed.