2022 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Virtual Conference

March 13 - 15, 2022

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5/21/2018  |   2:30 PM - 2:45 PM   |  THE PAST AS A PREDICTOR: IMPORTANCE OF ANTECEDENT FLOW FOR EXPLAINING ECOLOGICAL TRENDS IN AN URBAN RIVERSCAPE   |  410 B

THE PAST AS A PREDICTOR: IMPORTANCE OF ANTECEDENT FLOW FOR EXPLAINING ECOLOGICAL TRENDS IN AN URBAN RIVERSCAPE

Urban streams can have highly altered flow regimes which can influence both biotic and abiotic components of riverscapes. We use data collected at 10 streamflow gaged sites from 2003-2016 to analyze how antecedent flow, habitat, and water quality are related to trends in biological assemblages of an urban stream in the transition zone from the Rocky Mountains to the Great Plains. These data include annual samples of aquatic invertebrates, fish communities, water quality, and habitat from the Fountain Creek basin, CO. We examined trends in biological communities and explored relationships between these trends and abiotic variables (antecedent streamflow, physical habitat, and water quality) using a combination of trend tests, correlation analyses, and linear regressions. Our analysis shows that the majority of significant trends decreased over this period. Overall, fish metric trends were decreasing on average by 40 percent, invertebrate metrics decreased by 9.5 percent, and antecedent streamflow was the most common explanatory variable of these trends. We also found that antecedent measures of peakflow events identified a potential threshold that limits age-0 survival for Flathead Chub (Platygobio gracilis), a species of conservation concern.

• Fish
• Hydrology
• Invertebrate