Impacts of land use and environmental factors on macroinvertebrate functional feeding groups in the Dongjiang River basin, southeast China

Abstract

The aim of this study was to assess the impacts of different land use practices on physicochemical characteristics and macroinvertebrate functional feeding groups (FFGs) in the Dongjiang River basin, southeast China and also to evaluate if macroinvertebrate FFGs match the river continuum concept (RCC) predictions. For this aim, a total of 30 sampling sites were selected that comprised three different land use types (10 forest, 10 agricultural, and 10 urban sites) and sampled during the dry season in January 2013. Analysis of variance results showed evident differences in the environmental factors among the three land use types, particularly between the forest and urban sites. The forest sites had significantly lower water temperature, lower stream order, higher pH, higher dissolved oxygen, higher elevation, and coarser substrates than the other land use sites. Conversely, the urban sites showed significantly higher mean values for electrical conductivity, nitrogen and phosphorus compounds. Significant differences in the shredder and predator richness and density were observed among land uses with more shredders and predators found in forest sites. Redundancy analysis showed a clear separation of forest sites from riparian modified areas (agriculture and urban use sites). Our results were broadly in accordance with the central RCC theme. However, the longitudinal distribution of predators and collectors did not completely match the prediction of the RCC. These results confirm that macroinvertebrate FFG structure has been altered by agricultural and urbanization practices in the Dongjiang River basin. Moreover, shredders and predators could be potential candidates for monitoring and assessing land use impacts on water quality in this basin to improve future watershed management.

Aquatic insect functional diversity and nutrient content in urban streams in a medium‐sized city

“…In this study in a medium‐sized city, we found that urbanization impacted functional group taxonomic richness and abundance, which is similar to what has been found in other large cities (Moore and Palmer , Smith and Lamp , Fu et al. ) and a medium‐sized city (Sterling et al. ).…”

“…Higher abundance of collectors, relative to other functional groups, in urban streams has been widely reported (Moore and Palmer , Smith and Lamp , Fu et al. , Sterling et al. ).…”

“…Shredder diversity is positively correlated to the amount of watershed forested land cover (Fu et al. ); however, while most of our watersheds have a high proportion of urban and agricultural landuse, they also have at least 50% forested landuse (Appendix : Table S1). There are likely other factors contributing to shredder richness and abundance in our streams beyond landuse.…”

The Influence of Riparian Corridor Land Use on the Pesquería River’s Macroinvertebrate Community (N.E. Mexico)

“…Nevertheless, evidence of the abundance of predators in disturbed areas remains inconclusive. While some authors have found a high density of predators in forested areas, some have observed that predators occurred more often in urban areas, whereas others have found that predators have similar distributions across different land use typologies [119][120][121][122]. In our case, the riparian forest/vegetation "strips" in sampling sites within urban land use areas served as buffers where predators can be found.…”

Impacts of Environmental Variables on a Phytoplankton Community: A Case Study of the Tributaries of a Subtropical River, Southern China

“…Thus, many scholars have performed many studies on the water quality and its influencing factors in the Dongjiang River [17,18]. Some research has discussed the aquatic ecosystem of the Dongjiang River from a biological viewpoint, assessing macroinvertebrates and phytoplankton [19][20][21]. The above research shows that a river has different hydrological conditions, pollution pressures and nutritional status in different seasons, and this difference also exists in every tributary.…”