HR: 16:30h
AN: NB44B-05    [Abstracts]
TI: Relationships among Land-Use, In-Stream Stressors, and Biological Condition in Prince George's County, MD
AU: * Lessard, J L
EM: joanna.lessard@tetratech.com
AF: Tetra Tech, Inc, 400 Red Brook Blvd, Suite 200 , Owings Mills, MD 21117 United States
AU: Stribling, S
EM: james.stribling@tetratech.com
AF: Tetra Tech, Inc, 400 Red Brook Blvd, Suite 200 , Owings Mills, MD 21117 United States
AU: Leppo, E
EM: erik.leppo@tetratech.com
AF: Tetra Tech, Inc, 400 Red Brook Blvd, Suite 200 , Owings Mills, MD 21117 United States
AB: As human disturbance increases in watersheds there is a resulting change in hydrologic stability that leads to alterations of in-stream habitat conditions. These in-stream alterations are called stressors because they represent sub-optimal to lethal conditions for aquatic organisms. The linkages and mechanisms that relate multiple stressors with complex landscape features (sources) are currently the focus of research across North America. The objective of this project was to illustrate the linkages and biological responses for coastal plain watersheds that contain a gradient of severity and types of human disturbance. Stepwise multiple-regression was performed on a routine biological monitoring database from Prince George's County, MD. Results demonstrated that urban land-use sources (medium-density residential, commercial, and industrial) and in-stream stressors of reduced physical habitat complexity (e.g., decreased gravel substrate, reduced channel sinuosity etc.) were most related to biological degradation. The biological response variables that had the strongest relationships with these sources and stressors were: the indexes of biotic integrity, EPT Index, Beck's Biotic Index, % Dominant Fish Species, and % generalists, omnivores, and invertivores. These types of analyses need to be conducted in a variety of ecoregions to understand the dynamics of the relationship between human disturbance and the biological condition of streams.
DE: 1803 Anthropogenic effects
SC: North American Benthological Society [NB]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly