User’s Guide for Riofish: A Fishery Management Model for Large New Mexico Reservoirs

RIOFISH is a simulation model designed to analyze the impact of proposed fisheries-related management decisions in the hydrology, ecology, and economy of river basins. It has been expanded from the original version, developed by Cole et al. (1987) and Green-Hammond et al. (1988). The primary use of RIOFISH is for the development and contrast of planning alternatives. Although RIOFISH can be used to estimate optimum management decisions, based on estimates of maximum benefits generated, it is not a linear optimization model. In addition to the Rio Grande, which was modeled in the original version, RIOFISH includes reservoir fisheries of the Canadian, Pecos, and San Juan rivers in New Mexico. Numerous other modifications have been made to expand model utility.

This guide is designed to help you use RIOFISH. It includes sections covering

• RIOFISH structure and uses,
• how to run RIOFISH on an IBM-compatible microcomputer or the Data General computer at New Mexico Department of Game and Fish,
• an example scenario of management alternatives for self-paced instruction,
• the variables used in RIOFISH and information on how they influence model simulation, and
• further potential uses for RIOFISH.

We suggest that you read Sections I and II, and that you run the example scenario in Section III before trying to run RIOFISH on your own. Descriptions of the variables that make RIOFISH run as well as other examples of applications are presented in Sections IV and V.

The computer hardware necessary to run RIOFISH includes an IBM-compatible microcomputer with a hard disk and 640K of RAM. The model requires about 2.5 megabytes of space on a hard disk. Additional software necessary to run RIOFISH includes MS DOS 2.0. or higher, and the APL program available from the authors.

This guide does not include descriptions of modeling philosophy, model development, model limitations, or the mathematical structure of RIOFISH. For a more detailed description of RIOFISH, refer to Cole et al. (1990).