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FROM LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY OF WATERSHEDS TO BENTHIC ECOLOGY OF ESTUARIES
Citation:
Hale, S S., J F. Paul, D McGovern, J Copeland, AND J Heltshe. FROM LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY OF WATERSHEDS TO BENTHIC ECOLOGY OF ESTUARIES. Presented at Estuarine Research Federation Conference, Seattle, WA, September 14-18, 2003.
Description:
Do land use/cover characteristics of watersheds associated with small estuaries (<260 km2) have a strong enough signal to make landscape metrics useful for finding impaired bottom communities? We tested this idea with 58 pairs of small estuaries and watersheds from Delaware Bay to Chesapeake Bay. We considered 29 landscape metrics as potential explanatory variables and developed logistic regression models to calculate the probabilities of degraded benthic environmental quality (BEQ), defined by chemical parameters, and impaired estuarine bottom communities, defined by a benthic index and by the total number of bottom-dwelling species. A model using percent wetlands and the sum of all human uses correctly classified BEQ in 86% of the cases; low benthic index and low total number of bottom species were each associated with degraded BEQ (p < 0.01). The benthic index model showed excellent discrimination (area under receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.81) and correctly predicted the benthic index of an independent data set 79% of the time (p < 0.05). Watersheds with higher percentages of urban and agricultural land uses were associated with low benthic index and low total number of species, while those with higher percentages of wetlands were associated with high numbers.