HR: 1330h
AN: NB33B-14    [Abstracts]
TI: Post-Flood Recovery of Invertebrate Communities on the Salmon Streams of the Lower Kenai Peninsula, Alaska.
AU: * Mauger, S
EM: sue@inletkeeper.org
AF: Cook Inlet Keeper, 3734 Ben Walters Lane, Suite 201, Homer, AK 99603 United States
AB: Cook Inlet Keeper and the Homer Soil and Water Conservation District have been partnering since 1998 to monitor water quality on the lower Kenai Peninsula's most economically, culturally, and socially important salmon streams: Anchor River, Stariski Creek, Deep Creek, and Ninilchik River. Although these rivers support abundant salmon populations and are nutrient rich, these waterways ranked only "fair" in a 1997 macroinvertebrate assessment of Kenai Peninsula salmon streams by the University of Alaska Anchorage's Environment and Natural Resources Institute, perhaps providing an early warning signal that these high priority watersheds are being degraded. These streams are under new stresses from: 1) population growth and urban sprawl; 2) widespread spruce bark beetle infestation; 3) elevated sediment and temperature levels; and 4) catastrophic flooding events in the Fall of 2002. Cook Inlet Keeper expanded its bioassessment program in 2003 and 2004 to track the biological communities in these streams and to understand flood effects on stream productivity. Preliminary results suggest that short term reductions in abundance but not diversity occurred after flood events and that chronic sediment deposition may be responsible for sub-optimal community assessments.
DE: 1815 Erosion and sedimentation
DE: 1821 Floods
SC: North American Benthological Society [NB]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly