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Home on the Big River: Great River Habitat Quality Indices
Citation:
TAYLOR, D. L., M. S. PEARSON, T. R. ANGRADI, D. W. BOLGRIEN, B. H. HILL, T. M. JICHA, AND M. F. MOFFETT. Home on the Big River: Great River Habitat Quality Indices . Presented at Minnesota Water Resouorces Conference, St Paul, MN, October 27 - 28, 2008.
Impact/Purpose:
To study an integrated assessment of ecological condition in EMAP.
Description:
EPA’s Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program sampled the Upper Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio Rivers from 2004 through 2006 as part of an integrated assessment of ecological condition. We developed fish habitat indices by dividing the components of habitat into four categories: Channel complexity, substrate, littoral structures, and human impacts. Fish assemblages were characterized by Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS), with the first dimension explaining 63 percent of the variation in both the impounded Upper Mississippi and on the Lower Missouri and unimpounded Mississippi fish communities. More diverse and intolerant fish assemblages on the impounded Mississippi River were best explained by channel complexity, particularly the existence of multiple channels and backwaters and the absence of human-constructed channel constraint. On the Lower Missouri and unimpounded Mississippi Rivers, a more intolerant fish community was associated with less constructed channel constraint, more large woody debris, and less agricultural impacts in adjacent riparian lands.