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Quantifying Relationships between Water Quality and Aquatic Life Use Attainment using Sediment Profile Imagery (SPI)
Citation:
Nestlerode, J., Jim Hagy, AND M. Murrell. Quantifying Relationships between Water Quality and Aquatic Life Use Attainment using Sediment Profile Imagery (SPI). CERF 2015, Portland, OR, November 08 - 12, 2015.
Impact/Purpose:
Present results from monthly SPI and water quality survey.
Description:
We present results from a monthly SPI and water quality survey of nine stations along a transect in the Pensacola Bay estuary spanning the salinity gradient from Escambia River to the Gulf of Mexico. We evaluated Benthic Habitat Quality (Nilsson and Rosenberg 1997) derived from sediment profile images from sites covering a range of sediment types (muds to sands) and dissolved oxygen status (high to low dissolved oxygen; intermittent to persistent hypoxia) within this single estuarine complex. SPI sampling took place in conjunction with monthly water quality surveys and sediment grab samples to ground-truth sediment type and species of macrobenthic invertebrates observed in the SPI images. The results of this study are a step toward validating the use of SPI to quantify effect of water quality on benthos in a Gulf coast estuary. Whereas recent water quality management efforts in Florida such as development of numeric nutrient criteria (NNC) and the new marine DO standard assumed linkages between DO and aquatic life use attainment based on laboratory tests, these measures will support validation of these relationships in realistic field settings.