DEVELOPMENT OF AN INVERTEBRATE COMMUNITY INDEX FOR AN ALABAMA COASTAL PLAIN WATERSHED¹

Abstract

Activities such as agriculture, silviculture, and mining contribute nonpoint pollution to Alabama's streams through polluted runoff and excessive sedimentation. Highly erodible soils characteristic of the Choctawhatchee‐Pea Rivers watershed, combined with intense rainfall and land use practices, contribute large amounts of sediment to streams. Biological monitoring can reflect the acute impacts of pollutants as well as prolonged effects of habitat alteration, and development of biological criteria is important for the establishment of enforceable laws regarding nonpoint source pollution. Macroinvertebrates were collected from 49 randomly selected sites from first through sixth‐order streams in the Choctawhatchee‐Pea Rivers watershed and were identified to genus level. Thirty‐eight candidate metrics were examined, and an invertebrate community index (ICI) was calibrated by eliminating metrics that failed to separate impaired from unimpaired streams. Each site was scored with those metrics, and narrative scores were assigned based on ICI scores. Least impacted sites scored significantly lower than sites impacted by row crop agriculture, cattle, and urban land uses. Conditions in the watershed suggest that the entire area has experienced degradation through past and current land use practices. An initial validation of the index was performed and is described. Additional evaluations of the index are in progress.

Characterization of large wood and its relationship to pool formation and macroinvertebrate metrics in southeastern coastal plain streams, USA

“…Sites were selected from Bennett et al (2004) and Collins (2004) to represent southeastern coastal plain streams (Figure 1). In this study, these were classified into three categories to broadly represent land use conditions -urban, forest, and mixed.…”

“…Attributes of macroinvertebrate assemblages including EPT (number of Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Tricoptera species), H 0 (ShannonWiener diversity), and species richness are developed based on the structure and function of these assemblages (Barbour et al 1996). For southeastern coastal plain streams, Bennett et al (2004) developed an Invertebrate Community Index (ICI), a multimetric index that measures the biological integrity of streams. This index combined 10 metrics based on taxa richness, composition, and functional feeding groups of the benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages and ranges in value from 0 to 60, delineating five categories of stream condition from very poor to excellent.…”

Assessment of seasonal and spatial variation of surface water quality, identification of factors associated with water quality variability, and the modeling of critical nonpoint source pollution areas in an agricultural watershed

“…Surface water quality parameters' values change daily, monthly, seasonally, or annually because of differences in agricultural activities, land use types, degradation of streamside vegetation, seasons, and rain events in an agricultural watershed (Bennett et al 2004;Sridhar et al 2004;Poudel 2006), and the water quality parameters exhibit a high level of multicollinearity (Poudel and Simon 2008). The parameters' values also change due to in-stream biogeochemical processes, atmospheric deposition, and hydrological changes.…”

Valoración estacional de las amenazas contra la conservación de Inia geoffrensis humboldltiana (Cetartiodactyla Iniidae) en la cuenca del Río Meta, Colombia

“…Fuente: Gómez-Salazar et al (2012). Alcamo et al (2005), Hoekstra et al (2011), Revenga et al (2000, Alkemade et al (2009), Moyle and Randall (1998), Alcamo et al (2003), GIWA (2002), Milà i Canals et al (2009), Falkenmark (1997, Bennett et al (2004), Karr y Chu (1999), Vörösmarty et al (2000), Vörösmarty et al (2010).…”