2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH
6/06/2017 | 10:15 AM - 10:30 AM | THINKING OUTSIDE THE COOKBOOK: ADDRESSING ISSUES OF FUNCTIONAL AND SPATIAL SCALES IN FAIRFAX COUNTY (VA) URBAN STREAM BIOASSESSMENTS | 302A
THINKING OUTSIDE THE COOKBOOK: ADDRESSING ISSUES OF FUNCTIONAL AND SPATIAL SCALES IN FAIRFAX COUNTY (VA) URBAN STREAM BIOASSESSMENTS
Many water resource agencies use multimetric indices (MMIs) to characterize benthic macroinvertebrate community condition and produce stream assessments to meet management, planning and/or regulatory objectives. Often managers use off-the-shelf “cookbook” metrics for MMIs without closely examining underlying assumptions that affect assessments. Functional metrics rely on autecological assignments such as tolerance values (TVs) for individual taxa and are widely used in bioassessments. However, many programs use TVs developed by others, and few metrics are developed within urban systems. Additionally, streams are assessed at different spatial scales to answer different management questions. Local variations in landform and land uses may be overlooked at broader regional/watershed scales. Urban land use is commonly a low percentage of total catchment area, yet it exerts a large influence locally. Fairfax County’s urban streams are assessed at hierarchical scales (county, state, and interstate watershed) by various entities to meet differing objectives. Our analyses suggest that widely used metrics do not fully reflect the range of taxa abundance within a variable urban landscape, and that broad-scaled assessments may not answer questions about ecological condition at local scales.
- S23 Rehabilitating urban streams: perspectives from science and management
- C08 Urban Ecology
- S23 Rehabilitating urban streams: perspectives from science and management
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Presenters/Authors
LeAnne Astin
(), Fairfax County Stormwater Planning, leanne.astin@fairfaxcounty.gov;
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