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Assessments 2:
What the biota can tell us about watershed condition
K.E. Limburg lecture notes
26 March, 2002
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Outline
1. Intro: a brief glimpse at a defining moment for KL
2. What we mean by “watershed health”
3. Biotic assessments – common methods
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Biotic assessments – an introduction through a study by KL and colleagues in the Hudson River watershed
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Research project:
“Larval fish use of tributaries of the Hudson” – R.E. Schmidt and K.E. Limburg
Goal: to quantify “larval fish flux” from tributaries to the mainstem – connecting the system pieces
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Initial hypotheses:
1. Spawning would proceed from south to north (temperature effect)
2. More production in smaller streams
3. Anthropogenic effects might be important
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Studied 16 tribs, in 4 “reaches” of the estuary: 1st to 9th order
• sampled weekly for 15 weeks in spring
• 4 teams sampled during same 48 hr period – synoptic survey
• collected fish larvae, measured flow, DO, pH
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Some streams were sublime
Some had obvious problems!
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Some streams were just mysterious at the time!
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Methods
Dusk sampling…
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“proto-GIS”
Method of quantifying land use
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Results
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Ln(1
+(#
fish/
m3 )
)
Strong spatial patterns
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Tribs warmed up more or less simultaneously – we did not see a south-to-north trend in fish production
Size of stream did not appear to matter in this study
Land use type, in particular, land in urban and suburban uses, did!!
Main points:
Verified by other studies in other places
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Watershed Health• How does land use change affect the ecological structure and function of a watershed?
• How can environmental change be linked to land use and economic change?
• What is/should be the role of watershed health and monitoring in designing policy?
• How does tributary health affect the larger ecosystem?
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Ecosystem (and hence, watershed) health, qu’est-ce que c’est? - a concept that’s been around a long time, currently enjoying a comeback
• maintenance of “biotic integrity”
• resistance and/or resilience of systems in the face of disturbance
• absence of factors that degrade ecological population, community, and ecosystem structure and function
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Waterways and water bodies are often good sites for assessing “watershed health”
-- why?
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Low Human influence High
Met
ric B
Met
ric A
Ecosystem indicators of anthropogenic disturbance should ideally be sensitive to these factors, and not confounded by natural ones
(or at least possible to tease out the differences)
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Federal, state, local agencies have really espoused this concept
So have many non-profit organizations
Possible to enlist the help of many volunteers (e.g., FL-LOWPA, Hudson R. Basin Watch)
US EPA
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EPA Bioindicators homepage:
http://www.epa.gov/bioindicators/index.html
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US EPA
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US EPA
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US EPA
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US EPA
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Assessing watershed health with biotic indicators:
The idea: organisms and ecosystems integrate and reflect the insults (or lack thereof) resulting from watershed-level processes
Some techniques have proven robust after 25+ years of testing; others in development
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Indicators of ecosystem health can (should?) evaluate changes at levels of
•Population•Community/habitat•Whole-system
Metrics may not all be additive, although many schemes designed that way
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1. Taxonomic soundness and easily recognized2. Cosmopolitan distribution3. Numerical abundance4. Low genetic and ecological variability5. Large body size6. Limited mobility and relatively long-life history7. Ecological characteristics are well known8. Suitable for use in laboratory studies
Ideal indicator species characteristics
(Resh and Rosenberg, 1993)
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Uses fish community characteristics to assess aquatic health: includes for example
• Species richness & abundance• Total biomass (and distribution)• Ratio of native spp to introduced• Functional role ID (generalists vs specialists, detritivores, piscivores, etc)• Condition & health indices
Example: Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI)
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IBI’s originally worked out for Ohio streams (James Karr and colleagues)
- in general, these are region-specific
- therefore, IBI’s must be calibrated to a given region
- for northern Mid-Atlantic drainages, a calibration study for a regional IBI will soon be published (Daniels et al., Transactions of the American Fisheries Society)
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Other taxonomic can also be used as indicators of watershed condition – most, but not all, work is done in streams:
• benthic macroinvertebrates
• periphyton
• macrophytes (aquatic and wetland)
• birds (some work in PA and Southeast)
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NY State biotic assessment website:
http://www.dec.state.ny.us/website/dow/stream/index.htm
This site is specifically for rapid bio-assessments using stream macroinvertebrates – contains a pictorial key and verbal descriptions
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Pro’s and con’s of indicators