Aquatic Macroinvertebrates as Indicators of Water Quality in the - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Aquatic Macroinvertebrates as Indicators of Water Quality in the Salt and Verde Rivers

Biocriteria and Bioassessment

• Bioassessments provide integrated

evaluations of water quality.

• They can identify impairments of aquatic life

from contamination of the water column and sediments from known or unregulated chemicals, non-chemical impacts, and altered physical habitat.

• Resident biota can function as

continual monitors of biological integrity, increasing the likelihood of detecting the effects of episodic events, toxic non-point source pollution, cumulative pollution, or

• ther impacts that chemical

monitoring alone is unlikely to detect.

• Biocriteria can be used to assess

to what extent current regulations are protecting designated and/or existing aquatic life uses.

Multimetric Indices to Prepare and Analyze Biological Data

• Multimetric indices combine indicators, or

metrics, into a single index value.

• Each metric is tested and calibrated to a

scale and transformed into a unitless score prior to being aggregated into a multimetric index.

• Both the index, and the scale, are useful in

diagnosing ecological condition.

Indices of Biotic Integrity

• Calculated for Arizona’s perennial,

wadeable streams (Patti Spindler, ADEQ).

• Clustered into cold and warm water

designations instead of ecoregions.

Warmwater metrics for Arizona as derived from reference streams.

4.9 Hilsenhoff Biotic Index 20.9 % Dominant taxa 70.8 % Ephemeroptera 25.1 % Scraper 7.0 Scraper taxa 9.0 Diptera taxa 7.0 Ephemeroptera taxa 8.0 Trichoptera taxa 34 Total taxa Metric Threshold Value Metric

Index of Biotic Integrity assessment scores (warmwater)

0-26 27-52 53-72` 73-100 Poor/Very Impaired Fair/Impaired Good Exceptional

Site Scores

• Salt1 (Salta bove Roosevelt): 60 “good”
• Salt2 (Salt below Stewart Mtn. Dam): 22 “very

impaired”

• Salt3 (Salt at Phon D. Sutton): 29 “impaired”
• V1 (Verde at Sheep Bridge): 88 “exceptional”
• V2 (Verde below Horseshoe): 41 “fair – impaired”
• V3 (Verde below Bartlett Dam): 25 “poor – very

impaired”

• V4 (Verde at Beeline Hwy.): 34 “fair – impaired”

Reservoir Effect on Stream Biota

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Mean(IBI Score) Above Below

Why?

• Regulated flows below the reservoirs

lack of the right type and amount of disturbance needed for diversity.

Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis

• Suggests that the greatest biodiversity is

maintained by disturbances of intermediate severity or frequency.

• Very mild or rare disturbances allow

competitive exclusion and produce low species diversity.

• Very frequent or catastrophic disturbances

cause local mass extinction and again, produce low species diversity.

• Intermediate disturbance, as is typically

seen in unregulated streams/rivers, neither cause extinction or allow competitive exclusion.

• They do prevent dominant competitors

from increasing to shutout levels.

• Thus, intermediate disturbances tend to

maintain species diversity.

Tolerance

• 1

1 3 5 7 9 11 SALT1 SALT2 SALT3 V1 V2 V3 V4 Site Site Error

• C. Total

Source 6 364 370 DF 43.76029 898.46074 942.22102 Sum of Squares 7.29338 2.46830 Mean Square 2.9548 F Ratio 0.0079 Prob > F

Analysis of Variance

SALT1 SALT2 SALT3 V1 V2 V3 V4 Level 74 69 53 42 35 46 52 Number 6.50000 6.97101 7.09434 5.95238 6.42857 6.60870 6.86538 Mean 0.18263 0.18914 0.21580 0.24242 0.26556 0.23164 0.21787 Std Error 6.1408 6.5991 6.6700 5.4757 5.9063 6.1532 6.4369 Lower 95% 6.8592 7.3430 7.5187 6.4291 6.9508 7.0642 7.2938 Upper 95% Std Error uses a pooled estimate of error variance

Means for Oneway Anova Oneway Anova Oneway Analysis of Tolerance By Site

• Ancylidae

Astacidae Baetidae Belostomatidae Calopterygidae Candoniidae Capniidae Carabidae Centropagidae Ceratopogonidae Chironomidae Coenagrionidae Corbiculidae Corixidae Corydalidae Curculionidae Cypridae Cypridopsidae Daphniidae Dolichopodidae Dorylaimidae Dryopidae Dytiscidae Elmidae Empididae Eremaeidae Erpobdellidae Eylaidae Gerridae Glossosomatidae Gomphidae Haliplidae Helicopsychidae Hydrachnidae Hydridae Hydrobiidae Hydrodromidae Hydrophilidae Hydropsychidae Hydroptilidae Hydroscaphidae Hypogastruridae Leptoceridae Leptophlebiidae Libellulidae Libertiidae Limnaeidae Limnocharidae Lumbriculidae Lymnaeidae Macroveliidae Naucoridae Nemouridae Stratiomyidae Sysiridae Tabanidae Talitridae Tanyderidae Temoridae Tipulidae Tricorythidae Tubificidae Veliidae cyclorrhaphous brachycera 20 40 60

Invert Family Distributions

Odontoceridae Philopotamidae Physidae Planariidae Planorbidae Psychodidae Pyralidae Simuliidae Sperchontidae Sphaeridae

Questions?