2022 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Virtual Conference
March 13 - 15, 2022
5/27/2021 | 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM | DIAGNOSING THE CAUSES OF ALTERED BIODIVERSITY IN FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS: DEVELOPMENT, EVALUATION, AND INTERPRETATION OF A TEMPERATURE-SPECIFIC BIOTIC INDEX | Virtual Platform
DIAGNOSING THE CAUSES OF ALTERED BIODIVERSITY IN FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS: DEVELOPMENT, EVALUATION, AND INTERPRETATION OF A TEMPERATURE-SPECIFIC BIOTIC INDEX
Most indices used to assess biological integrity do not identify specific causes of alteration. Biotic indices that measure differences between observed and expected tolerances of multiple taxa to specific stressors could help diagnose causes of biodiversity loss/alteration. Individual species tolerance values (TVs) are typically derived from species-stressor associations observed from field data. We used 6 methods to derive thermal TVs for 290 lotic macroinvertebrate taxa collected at 1954 USEPA NRSA (2008/2009) sites and examined how strongly mean assemblage thermal TVs (MATTVs) were associated with modeled stream temperature. The associations between all 6 MATTVs and site temperature at 302 NRSA 2013/2014 reference sites were similar (r2 range = 0.72–0.75). MATTV associations were weak with other environmental factors (r2<0.23) except for Chloride (r2 = 0.50), which is unlikely a stressor at the concentrations observed (<32 mg/L). We used one set of the TVs to create a temperature biotic index (TBI), which we applied to all 1789 2013/2014 NRSA survey sites. 214 (12%) and 34 (2%) of these sites had TBI values > or < than the 95th and 5th percentiles of reference-site values, respectively, implying thermally altered assemblages at these sites.
- Monitoring
- Biodiversity
- Biological effects
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Presenters/Authors
Donald Benkendorf
(), Utah State University, donald.benkendorf@aggiemail.usu.edu;
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Charles Hawkins
(), Utah State University, chuck.hawkins@usu.edu;
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