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MACROINVERTEBRATE METRICS AND WATER CHEMISTRY RELATIONSHIPS FROM NON-WADEABLE STREAMS OF THE MID-ATLANTIC INTEGRITY ASSESSMENT
Citation:
Klemm, D J., K A. Blocksom, W T. Thoeny, AND A. T. Herlihy. MACROINVERTEBRATE METRICS AND WATER CHEMISTRY RELATIONSHIPS FROM NON-WADEABLE STREAMS OF THE MID-ATLANTIC INTEGRITY ASSESSMENT. Presented at Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Nashville, TN, November 12-16, 2000.
Impact/Purpose:
The goal of this research is to develop methods and indicators that are useful for evaluating the condition of aquatic communities, for assessing the restoration of aquatic communities in response to mitigation and best management practices, and for determining the exposure of aquatic communities to different classes of stressors (i.e., pesticides, sedimentation, habitat alteration).
Description:
Macroinvertebrates were collected from non-wadeable streams during the summer of 1997 and 1998 for the USEPA Environmental Monitoring and Assessent Program (EMAP) Mid-Atlantic Integrated Assessment (MAIA). In this study we examined macroinvertebrate metrics to identify those which would help us assess biological condition in these streams. Because there were no designated reference or impaired sites we used water chemistry and minimum count criteria established for selecting reference sites among wadeable streams in the Mid-Atlantic Highlands region. We found distinct patterns in the data by examining metric values up to and beyond these criteria values. In addition we separated the 45 sites with water chemistry data into those fitting all criteria ("best" sites) , those fitting none ("worst" sites) and those in between. Using chemical-macroinvertebrate metric relationships and the ability of the metrics to discriminate the best and worst sites, we identified 5 out of 43 metrics evaluated which might be useful in assessing the biological integrity and health of the biological community in non-wadeable streams. These metrics included number of taxa, total number of individuals in the sample, % collector-gatherer individuals, number of Ephemeroptera, Trichoptera and Odonata taxa, and % tolerant taxa.