Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Terminology
‘ – feet, a United States unit of length, when it follows a number
” – inches, a United States unit of length, when it follows a number
BLM – United States Bureau of Land Management, Department of Interior
BTANSD – But This Alone is Not Species-Diagnostic
C – degrees Celsius
cfs – cubic foot per second, a measure of liquid flow; equivalent to 28.3 liters per second, 449 gallons per minute, and 1.98 acre-feet per day; I haven’t converted it to metric where only the relative difference in drain or river flow on different sampling dates is important
cm – centimeter
DB – Denton Belk
EIGWUU – Estimate Is a Guess With Unknown Uncertainty
F – degrees Fahrenheit, a United States unit of temperature
g – gram, equivalent to 0.03527 ounces
GPS – global positioning system device
kg – kilogram, equivalent to 2.2046 pounds
km – kilometer
m – meter
mg/L – milligrams per liter
mm – millimeter
NDOW – Nevada Department of Wildlife
NPPWOPII – Never Pass a Puddle WithOut Peering Into It
ppm – parts per million, i.e., 1/1,000,000, 0.000001; the U.S. Geological Survey uses milligrams per kilogram or micrograms per gram instead but if grams are in the numerator and denominator, they cancel out so the result is a fraction, like percent, that measures how much of the whole sample the analyte is rather than the analyte’s weight
TDS – total dissolved solids, see below
TNM – The National Map
USFS – United States Forest Service, Department of Agriculture
USGS – United States Geological Survey, Department of Interior
UTM – Universal Transverse Mercator
WGF – Wyoming Game and Fish Department
WIDLA – When In Doubt, Look Anyway
WSA – Wilderness Study Area
Notes on Other Terminology
1:100,000-scale BLM Map
Roads
Pond
Large Branchiopod
Conchostraca
Cladoceran
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS)
1:100,000-scale BLM map
This means the BLM edition of the 30-minute by 60-minute topographic quadrangle prepared by the USGS with different colors for federal, state, and private land ownership. It also has sections, townships, and ranges of the Public Land Survey System. Older versions have tick marks for Universal Transverse Mercator 10-kilometer grids and for State Plane 25,000-feet grids but these are gone on a 2006 map I have. I use this term to emphasize the small scale, which means small water bodies aren’t shown. Quadrangle names are given in the data spreadsheet for those who want to know which quadrangle a particular pond is on.
Roads
The maps of pond locations derived from The National Map use 4 terms to describe roads: maintained, rough, poor, and very poor. Many, if not most, roads on a map are not labeled because I am uncertain of their condition or they are not needed to access a pond.
- Maintained – This means a non-paved road that is graded or repaired from time to time, generally at least once a year or rarely about once a month. This does not mean that the road will be in good condition when you arrive but it is more likely to be passable than a road which is not maintained. Some of these roads can be comfortably driven at speeds of 50 miles per hour although it may not be safe to do so because of loose gravel on the road surface. This is a reasonably objective measure as it is relatively easy to determine if a road is maintained based on the presence of berms or roadside ditches that have not been strongly degraded by erosion and, to a lesser extent, on width. All the other road terms are subjective.
- Rough – This means a road that does not appear to be regularly maintained or has not been maintained in a long time but, in my opinion, does not present significant obstacles to 2-wheel drive, high-clearance vehicle traffic. Such roads are typically bumpy in spots and may have difficult rutted, rocky, or sandy sections.
- Poor – This means a road that is very rough at least in spots, can only be driven slowly, and should not be attempted without a high-clearance vehicle with tough tires. Features that could make a road poor are steep dips at stream cuts; abundant, cantaloupe-size rocks; extensive ruts; steep grades with a loose surface; or deep sand. Some such roads may be passable to 2-wheel drive vehicles but 4-wheel drive would provide greater certainty that you will get to where you want to go.
- Very Poor – This means a very bad road that I would not want to drive again. On the other hand, such a road might be a welcome challenge to a hard-core 4-wheeler. Above average clearance and 4-wheel drive with a low range should be considered minimum requirements.
Pond
I use this term to mean any body of water on land that has not been officially named a lake except in 2 cases. The first is unnamed, clearly permanent water bodies with one dimension more than about 200 m (660′), such as those in the Wind River Mountains. The second is to distinguish extensive playa lakes, such as Luning Playa Lake and Rhodes Big Lake, which have water covering areas of the playa more than about 100 m (330′) across, from small localized playa ponds in the same area, such as Luning Playa Narrow Pond and Rhodes Potholes. My estimates of water body sizes are subject to large errors so even if I knew of a well accepted threshold to distinguish pond from lake based on size, I could not apply it accurately. More importantly, as ephemeral water bodies dry up, their sizes change dramatically. Sizes can also change from year to year depending on precipitation. The minimum size of an ephemeral water body will always be small enough to be considered a pond, whether or not I see it just before it dries up. With one or two visits, I’m unlikely to see the maximum dimension of a water body so using that to define a lake is also subject to significant error. Using the currently observed dimension to choose between lake and pond could result in inconsistencies if the water body is observed more than once. Notwithstanding the widely used oxymoron “dry lake”, the biggest problem with pond-lake nomenclature is that neither term applies, by definition, to ephemeral water bodies. This is a serious deficiency in the English language, which I won’t propose to correct.
Pond names which appear on topographic maps are placed within quotation marks to distinguish them from pond names that I have made up and from those that have been adopted by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department but may not be widely recognized.
Large Branchiopod
The term large branchiopod includes fairy shrimp (order Anostraca), tadpole shrimp (order Notostraca), and clam shrimp (order or superorder Conchostraca; alternatively orders Spinicaudata, Laevicaudata, and Cyclestherida). It does not include cladocerans (orders Anomopoda, Ctenopoda, Onychopoda, and Haplopoda; formerly order Cladocera), which are almost always smaller than 5 mm (0.2″). This is a handy term for distinguishing between branchiopods that are easily visible and those that aren’t.
Conchostraca
Referring to clam shrimp collectively is difficult. Decades ago, clam shrimp were considered members of the order Conchostraca (e.g., Pennak, 1978; for citations, see the References page). Conchostraca is no longer considered a valid taxonomic unit. Spinicaudata and Laevicaudata were previously sub-orders of Conchostraca but are now orders themselves. Cyclestheriidae was previously a family of clam shrimps in the sub-order Spinicaudata (e.g., Moore, 1969) but is now considered part of the newly designated order Cyclestherida by some. Olesen (2009) considered Cyclestherida distinct from Spinicaudata and Laevicaudata and placed it within Cladoceramorpha along with the cladoceran orders. His phylogenetic hierarchy had more levels than there are taxonomic levels so he didn’t say which animal groups are orders. On this web site, a clam shrimp is an animal that swims, has a bivalve shell that completely covers the body, and is bigger than ostracods and cladocerans. The key of Thorp and Covich (2001, p. 901) distinguishes between Spinicaudata and Laevicaudata based on the dorsal union of the 2 valves but I don’t think I can see the difference on a clam shrimp swimming through a pond.
Why do I use both terms “clam shrimp” and “Conchostraca”? “Conchostraca” gives better search results than “clam shrimp”. Some biologists and amateur naturalists may still use, or recognize, the term whether or not they consider the term to be taxonomically valid. A search for clam shrimp turns up “Shrimp and clam linguine” as the 22nd result with Google, “Shrimp boil with clams and lemon” at 6 with DuckDuckGo, and “Clam and Shrimp Cioppino” at 20 with Startpage. Quotations help (i.e., “clam shrimp”) but DuckDuckGo finds “Shrimp vs Clam – In-Depth Nutrition Comparison” as the 15th most relevant result, Google finds “Synonyms for Clam shrimp in Free Thesaurus. Antonyms for Clam shrimp. 12 synonyms for shrimp: cipher, nebbish, nobody, nonentity, nothing, pip-squeak, zero, …” at number 32, and Startpage has “Fish Clam Shrimp with Curly Fries” at number 40. Except for several garbage results (i.e., web site did not have term Conchostraca anywhere visible) with DuckDuckGo and “Conchostraca incense” on page 7 of the Google results, search results for Conchostraca appeared to be related to clam shrimp based on the excerpts. Startpage returned about 90 relevant results. Although many of the identified documents may be old, this suggests Conchostraca is, nonetheless, still a useful term. I suppose I could use Spinicaudata+Laevicaudata or Spinicaudata+Laevicaudata+Cyclestherida instead of Conchostraca but those who are specifically interested in Spinicaudata or Laevicaudata probably won’t be interested in this web site because I don’t know the order(s) of the clam shrimp I have seen except for the spinicaudatan Cyzicus belfragei in “Coyote Lake” and Northeastern “Lewiston Lake” in the Antelope Hills and in “Lost Creek Lake” and Sweetwater Mill Road Pond in the Great Divide Basin, which were all identified by DB.
Cladoceran.
The taxonomy of cladocerans is at least as confusing as that of clam shrimps. Like Conchostraca, Cladocera used to be an order. No more. Thorp and Covich (2001, p. 850) stated that the name cladocera has no taxonomic significance but “is still used for convenience”. They listed 4 orders of cladocerans. Olesen’s (2009) phylogenetic scheme similarly had 4 orders within a higher level “Cladocera” grouping. The name water flea has been applied to some cladocerans in the past but that term seems derogatory and so far off the mark that it is not used on this web site. So “cladoceran” is the only name this web site uses for cladocerans. Not only is identifying the order of a cladoceran beyond my abilities, I have a hard time distinguishing between cladocerans and copepods (see “Other Crustaceans You May Find with Fairy Shrimp” on the Biology of Anostraca page).
Total Dissolved Solids
Many terms and units have been used to describe the chemical composition of naturally occurring waters, including salinity, conductivity, and total dissolved solids. I hesitate to add osmolality and its units milli-Osmoles per kilogram, mOsm/kg, which are in their own circle of jargon hell. All are measured on water filtered to exclude any solid particles. Solid particles are quantified by measures of turbidity. Total dissolved solids, or TDS, and units of milligrams per liter, mg/L, are used on this web site because these are used for drinking water and are most likely to be known to the visitor. Where other terms or units have been reported, these have been converted to TDS in mg/L where possible or not used where not possible. My conversions may have errors of 10% or more due to unknown temperature, density, ionic composition, or other effects. For reference, average seawater has salinity of 35 g/kg (grams/kilogram), 35 o/oo (“per mil” where “mil” must be from the French “mille”, or thousand, not from “million”), or 35 ppt (part per thousand) and TDS of 35,000 mg/L (equivalent to ppm, or parts per million) at a specific gravity of 1 and a temperature of 25 C. Its conductivity at 25 C is 55 milli-siemens per centimeter (mS/cm) or 55,000 micro-siemens per centimeter. Siemens, named after Siemens, has replaced mho (which is the resistivity unit ohm, named after Ohm, spelled backwards) as the unit for conductivity. Salinity can also be reported in units of psu (practical salinity units), based on the Practical Salinity Scale, or as absolute salinity. I haven’t come across these units in my readings. TDS concentrations greater than 1,000 mg/L are generally considered unsuitable for drinking water. Water with a common ionic composition and TDS of 1,000 mg/L has conductivity of 1,413 micro-Siemens/cm. (see www.fondriest.com/environmental-measurements/parameters/water-quality/conductivity-salinity-tds/) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a secondary drinking water standard for TDS of 500 mg/L. This is not due to health effects but to “aesthetic” effects such as unpleasant color or taste or annoying mineral deposits.