2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference

March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH

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5/21/2018 | 9:45 AM - 10:00 AM | SILTATION AND STREAM MACROINVERTEBRATES: FROM THE COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF STRESSOR-SPECIFIC BIOMONITORING TOOLS | 410 A

SILTATION AND STREAM MACROINVERTEBRATES: FROM THE COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF STRESSOR-SPECIFIC BIOMONITORING TOOLS

Siltation (i.e. the unnatural accumulation of fine sediment) is now recognized as one of the most diffuse impacts in lotic ecosystems, due to the intensification of hydro-morphological (i.e. dams, water abstraction) and land-use (i.e. deforestation, agriculture, urbanization) alterations at local and watershed scale. We present here an overview of our studies dealing with the response of benthic invertebrate communities to allochthonous fine sediment in Alpine streams (Northwestern Italy). Combining results from a manipulative experiment with controlled conditions and two field studies, we first evaluated the main effects of fine sediment on macroinvertebrate communities in terms of composition and structure. Then, the resulting most sensitive metrics were statistically aggregated into a multi-metric and stressor-specific index, which encompassed a mix of taxonomical and functional metrics. Finally, an independent case study on the sedimentation from a reservoir was used to validate this new-developed index and compare its performance with other routinely applied indexes. Findings of these works provide useful tools for biomonitoring the effects of man-induced siltation in streams and contribute to improve the diagnostic ability concerning stressor-specific alterations.

Diagnostic Indices
Invertebrate
Sediment

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Presenters/Authors

Alberto Doretto (), University of Torino (Italy), alberto.doretto@unito.it;