Improper management of cattle near streams can negatively affect the processes that support stream and riparian ecosystems. To judge the success of riparian management strategies, public land management agencies often evaluate two metrics of livestock disturbance, stubble height and streambank alteration. There are concerns associated with how well these disturbance metrics reflect livestock use and incorporate additional effects due to wild ungulates. We sought to address these questions in 39 riparian areas by using time-lapse cameras to estimate ungulate use and then measuring near stream ungulate disturbance in these same reaches. We found daytime measures of livestock use were related to stubble height and streambank alteration. Explaining the variation in the relationship between stubble height and livestock use was improved by incorporating covariates, whereas covariates did little to improve our understanding of streambank alteration. This suggests greater flexibility in how different stream reaches are managed when stubble height is the guideline. As streambank alteration was explained solely by ungulate use, the simplest way to reduce disturbance was to reduce use. In most stream reaches, the additive presence of wild ungulates was minimal but sufficient to be included in the best models describing the effects of ungulate disturbance. On most days, no cattle were seen in the evaluated riparian reaches. Although large groups of cattle (> 20 individuals) were occasionally observed within riparian areas, they generally occurred in small groups of one to four individuals. Across the riparian reaches we evaluated, cattle presence and density were generally low enough that metrics of livestock disturbance suggested little risk to stream conditions important to aquatic biota. However, there were some riparian areas where cattle stayed too long or occurred in large enough numbers that their use along the streambanks could negatively affect stream habitat conditions.

溪流附近牲畜的管理不当会负面影响支撑溪流和河岸生态系统的过程。为了判断河岸管理策略的成功与否，公共土地管理机构经常评估牲畜干扰的两个指标：茬高和河岸变化。这些干扰指标如何很好地反映了牲畜的使用并结合了野生有蹄类动物带来的其他影响，令人担忧。我们试图通过使用延时摄影机来估计有蹄类动物的使用，然后测量这些河段的近河有蹄类动物的骚扰来解决39个河岸地区的这些问题。我们发现白天使用牲畜的措施与残茬高度和河岸变化有关。解释了残差高度与牲畜使用之间的关系变化，可以通过加入协变量来改善，而协变量几乎没有改善我们对河岸变化的理解。这建议在以茬高为准则的情况下，如何管理不同的河流，具有更大的灵活性。由于仅通过有蹄类动物的使用来解释河床改建，因此减少干扰的最简单方法是减少使用。在大多数河段中，野生有蹄类动物的累加性动物极少，但足以包含在描述有蹄类动物干扰影响的最佳模型中。在大多数日子里，在评估的河岸带没有发现牛。尽管在河岸地区偶尔观察到大群牛（> 20个体），它们通常以一到四个人的小组形式出现。在我们评估的河岸带范围内，牲畜的存在和密度普遍较低，以至于牲畜干扰的指标表明，对流向水生生物重要的条件的风险很小。但是，在一些河岸地区，牛的停留时间过长或数量过多，以致沿河岸使用它们可能会对河川的生境产生不利影响。