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MICROBIAL ACTIVITY: AN INDICATOR OF WATERSHED IMPACTS ON RIVERINE COASTAL WETLANDS OF LAKE MICHIGAN
Citation:
Jicha, T. M., C M. Elonen, L E. Anderson, AND N E. Detenbeck. MICROBIAL ACTIVITY: AN INDICATOR OF WATERSHED IMPACTS ON RIVERINE COASTAL WETLANDS OF LAKE MICHIGAN. Presented at 2002 Meeting of the International Association for Great Lakes Research, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, June 2-6, 2002.
Description:
The loss of watershed storage and/or forest cover due to land use, is expected to increase nutrient levels and sedimentation in the riverine coastal wetlands. Watershed indicators should be able to
distinguish between degradation gradients separating reference, transitional, and degraded systems. Ideally, indicators for nutrient criteria should also signal change in the system prior to evidence of impairment at the level of plant, insect, or fish populations and communities. Water quality parameters were expected to be inadequate due to spatial and temporal variability of these wetlands, therefore other approaches may be needed to assess these systems. We examined microbial activity as one measure of nutrient accumulation in living vegetation, accelerating nutrient release from decaying vegetation, and triggering -glucosidase enzyme activity. As nutrients are released to the sediments we could expect increased microbial biomass and potentially mineralizable N and P. Depending on these N:P ratios, phosphatase enzyme activity (DEA) decreases could indicate phosphorus or nitrate limitation respectfully.
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