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AQUATIC STREAM INDICATOR DEVELOPMENT IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES, PRELIMINARY RESULTS FOR ARIZONA, NEVADA, AND UTAH
Citation:
Kepner, W G., J. R. Baker, D V. Peck, P R. Kaufmann, R M. Hughes, W. L. Kinney, D J. Chaloud, AND K B. Jones. AQUATIC STREAM INDICATOR DEVELOPMENT IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES, PRELIMINARY RESULTS FOR ARIZONA, NEVADA, AND UTAH. Presented at 33rd Annual Meeting of the Desert Fishes Council, Alpine, TX, November 15-18, 2001.
Impact/Purpose:
There are four basic objectives of the project:
Demonstrate the application of a comparative landscape assessment in analyzing the vulnerability of surface and coastal water conditions to declines based on landscape conditions (as estimated by landscape indicators as demonstrated in the mid-Atlantic landscape atlas) in western environments;
Develop and apply landscape assessment approaches relative to specific issues, including an ability to prioritize the vulnerability of areas relative to the Clean Water Act 303(d) designations; Quantify relationships between landscape conditions (as measured by landscape indicators) and surface and coastal waters in the west to reduce the uncertainty in comparative landscape assessments, and issue-specific, landscape assessments (e.g., Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDLs);
Complete a west-wide, comparative landscape assessment relative to surface and coastal water vulnerability;
Transfer landscape assessment technologies to Regional Offices so that they can conduct landscape assessments at many scales.
Description:
Beginning in 1999, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency initiated a 5-year study of streams and rivers in 12 western States (AZ, CA, CO, ID, MT, NV, ND, OR, SD, UT, WA, and V;Y) as a component of the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP). The objective of EMAP is to develop and demonstrate tools to monitor and assess the condition of ecological resources at a regional and state level of scale. These tools include survey designs based on probabilistic sampling to randomly select sites, and appropriate indicators of biological condition that are then used to estimate the biological integrity of the sites. EMAP is just completing its second year of data acquisition and the biological and physicochemical data are beginning to be examined relative to the development of core indicators that can be utilized in region-wide assessments. This poster provides an overview of the indicator development and evaluation approach, and, as a case study, presents preliminary results regarding associations between metrics based on introduced fish occurrence and abundance and abiotic measures of chemistry and physical habitat, using data collected in 2000 from stream sites sampled in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah.