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Identification and Prediction of Fish Assemblages in Streams of the Albemarle-Pamlico Basin, USA
Citation:
CYTERSKI, M. J. Identification and Prediction of Fish Assemblages in Streams of the Albemarle-Pamlico Basin, USA. Presented at 94th Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM, August 02 - 07, 2009.
Impact/Purpose:
see description
Description:
Set within the Ecological Services Research Program (ESRP) of USEPA’s Office of Research and Development, a multi-disciplinary research collaborative (MEERT –Multimedia Ecological Exposure Research Team) has taken on a challenge to develop a regional assessment of several ecosystem services (primarily water quantity, water quality, and fish productivity) in the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary System (APES), an area encompassing six major drainage basins and spanning three ecoregions (Virginia Highlands, Piedmont, Southeastern/Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain). The collaborative group has developed a modeling system that will produce not only a current accounting of particular ecosystem services in the APES, but also simulate the consequences of altered stressor scenarios (changes in nitrogen and mercury loadings, land use and global climate) on the production of these services. This poster details how we provided the ecological model (BASS) with preliminary required information, namely, the initial fish community in the stream segment to be simulated. We had 53 such stream segments (three prototype HUCs for initial methodological/framework testing, and fifty sample HUCs) for which initial fish communities needed to be defined.