Citation:

Impact/Purpose:

Enable states, regions and tribes to evaluate stream biological conditions using biological and physical data.

Description:

A lake bioassessment integrity index (LBII) derived from 12 macroinvertebrate metrics was used to evaluate the biological integrity of 19 lakes in five New England States (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont). Of the 19 lakes classified according to temperature and size (warm, small; warm, large; cold, small; cold, large), 15 lakes had anthropogenic disturbances (including residential, agricultural, silvercultural, and fish stocking), and one minimally disturbed reference lake was selected from each category. The bioassessment index successfully ranked the biological integrity for 17 of the 19 lakes. Index scores of anthropogenically disturbed lakes were significantly higher (P<0.05) than index scores of reference lakes with little disturbance in each temperature and size category, indicating that the index may be useful in separating impacted from non-impacted lakes in the New England States.

Record Details: