Land Use, Geology, Enrichment, and Stream Biota in the Eastern Ridge and Valley Ecoregion: Implications for Nutrient Criteria Development¹

Abstract

The eastern panhandle region of West Virginia is entirely within the Appalachian Ridge and Valley ecoregion. It is underlain by limestone in the eastern part and by shale and sandstone in the western part. Agricultural and urban development has affected the condition of the streams of this region. We examined samples from 165 stations in the Ridge and Valley, collected from 1998 to 2004. Land use, geological characteristics, physical and chemical parameters, and algal and macroinvertebrate assemblages were used to identify potential stressors that affect streams in the region. Our analyses indicated that both human land uses and ecoregional differences led to elevated nutrient concentrations in streams of the study areas. Multiple regression analyses indicated that both agricultural and urban land use in the watershed were associated with high nutrient concentrations (NO2+3, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus) in streams. These elevated nutrient concentrations have led to increased algal biomass, increased trophic state, and degradation of macroinvertebrate community in the streams. Values of the West Virginia Stream Condition Index, as well as several other benthic macroinvertebrate metrics, decreased with increased nutrient concentrations and conductivity, especially in the limestone region. When regional differences were partitioned out in the analysis, nutrient concentrations became the strongest stressor in the limestone region while conductivity exhibited less of an effect on macroinvertebrate metrics. Meanwhile, periphyton diagnostic metrics also responded to increased nutrient concentrations, suggesting nutrients could be a cause of biological degradation in the Eastern Ridge and Valley region. Multiple approaches and multiple lines of evidence (reference approach and stressor‐response approach) were applied to develop nutrient benchmarks for different geological regions in the study watershed.

Effects of total dissolved solids on growth and mortality predict distributions of stream macroinvertebrates

“…Low TDS conditions occur only in catchments underlain by rocks resistant to chemical weathering, like granite or gneiss. Those studies that have related catchment geology to stream invertebrate composition have all shown that composition differences are related to variation in rock chemical weathering rates among catchments (Egglishaw & Morgan, ; Minshall & Minshall, ; Zheng et al ., ; Carrie, Dobson & Barlow, ). We need to extend our understanding of the importance of geodiveristy in maintaining biodiversity (Swanson et al ., ; Parks & Mulligan, ) to stream communities.…”

Macrophyte and macroinvertebrate patterns in unimpacted mountain rivers of two European ecoregions

“…This could be demonstrated evidently because the analyses were based on the results from the reference sites, where the natural gradient was not affected by human activities, such as water pollution and hydromorphological modifications. The increased trophic state leads to degradation of macroinvertebrate and macrophyte communities and the regional differences are usually reflected by differentiated nutrient concentrations associated with both agricultural and urban sources in the watershed Zheng et al, 2008). Our previous studies referred to the environmental factors and biological indices applied to benthic macroinvertebrates and macrophytes both at reference and human-impacted streams in two Ecoregions 9 and 10 ( Lewin et al, 2014).…”

Benthic Algal (Periphyton) Growth Rates in Response to Nitrogen and Phosphorus: Parameter Estimation for Water Quality Models

“…Harmful and nuisance algal blooms are often dominated by cyanobacteria and green algae (Pan et al 1996), with diatoms, dominant in lower nutrient headwater systems, considered one of the most sensitive classes of organisms to pollution, while also showing great variation in community composition across the continental U.S. (Potapova and Charles 2002;Potapova et al 2004;Potapova and Carlisle 2011). The abundance, diversity, and nutrient sensitivity of diatoms are reasons why they are used by many states to assess stream health and to develop numeric-nutrient criteria (Zheng et al 2008;Smith and Tran 2010;Charles et al 2019). In the western U.S., diatoms can be the dominant algae in a river (Crayton and Sommerfeld 1979;Fisher et al 1982) and nutrient enrichment is increasingly becoming a problem in the western U.S. (Sickman et al 2003;Baron et al 2011), making the problem a national issue (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 2016; Amos et al 2018).…”