HR: 10:30h
AN: NB32A-01    [Abstracts]
TI: Homogenization of Environmental Condition and Benthic Communities in Restored Streams of the North Carolina Piedmont.
AU: * Tullos, D D
EM: desireetullos@yahoo.com
AF: North Carolina State University Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Campus Box 7625, Raleigh, NC 27695 United States
AU: Penrose, D L
EM: dave_penrose@ncsu.edu
AF: North Carolina State University Water Quality Group, Campus Box 7637, Raleigh, NC 27695 United States
AU: Jennings, G D
EM: greg_jennings@ncsu.edu
AF: North Carolina State University Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Campus Box 7625, Raleigh, NC 27695 United States
AU: Wentworth, T R
EM: tom_wentworth@ncsu.edu
AF: North Carolina State University Botany Department, Campus Box 7612, Raleigh, NC 27695 United States
AB: Stream ecosystems, as described through benthic communities and twenty environmental variables, exhibited decreased variances and reduced ordinal dimensionality in restored streams when compared to associated upstream reaches in this upstream-downstream investigation of stream restoration in the North Carolina Piedmont. Through paired t-tests of the environmental variables and several descriptions of community structure and function, the variance for restored stream reaches was lower than the upstream reaches for 70% of environmental characteristics, for 75% of Functional Feeding and Habitat Groups, and for all of the community descriptions, including the Q statistic, Shannon Index, Simpson Index, EPT taxa richness, and NCBI. Further, Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling of the sites best expressed the upstream reaches on three axes, while the restored stream reaches required only one axis to effectively describe variation in the benthic communities. These results suggest that simplification of the biota may occur following steam restoration activities, indicating the biological losses associated with early recovery in these streams. While the science of stream restoration has advanced since the early construction and implementation at these sites, the consequential homogenization demonstrated by these biotic and abiotic stream corridor features emphasizes the importance of a concentrated effort to re-establish heterogeneity in restoration designs.
DE: 0400 Biogeosciences
DE: 9902 NABS Student Award Applied Research
SC: North American Benthological Society [NB]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly