EARLY HEARING DETECTION AND INTERVENTION VIRTUAL CONFERENCE
MARCH 2-5, 2021
(Virtually the same conference, without elevators, airplane tickets, or hotel room keys)
6/05/2017 | 10:15 AM - 10:30 AM | MESOCOSM METALS EXPOSURES TO NATURAL AQUATIC MACROINVERTEBRATE COMMUNITIES AS A MEASURE OF RESTORATION EFFECTIVENESS | 305B
MESOCOSM METALS EXPOSURES TO NATURAL AQUATIC MACROINVERTEBRATE COMMUNITIES AS A MEASURE OF RESTORATION EFFECTIVENESS
Aquatic insect communities in the upper Arkansas River have been monitored for over 25 years to assess responses before and after restoration of a US EPA ‘Superfund Site’ near Leadville, CO. By many traditional monitoring metrics (e.g. total abundance and species richness) it would appear that communities downstream of the main metals source (California Gulch) have recovered. However, the composition of aquatic insect communities differs between sites upstream and downstream of California Gulch. We hypothesized that different community structure would result in differing responses to metals exposure, and thus, would provide additional evidence that the communities are not yet fully recovered. To test this, we conducted mesocosm experiments using communities from a reference site upstream and a contaminated site downstream of California Gulch that were replicated over time (2009 and 2016). Our results indicate that downstream communities remain tolerant to metals, suggesting that these communities may not be fully recovered. We suggest that mesocosm experiments of natural communities will bolster current restoration monitoring, and may provide novel insight into ecological and evolutionary processes not possible through conventional biomonitoring methods alone.
- S03 Stressing the 'Eco' in Freshwater Ecotoxicology
- C13 Ecotoxicology
- S25 Do mesocosm experiments play a meaningful role in freshwater research
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Presenters/Authors
Brian Wolff
(), Colorado State University, wolffba@gmail.com;
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William Clements
(), Colorado State University, William.Clements@colostate.edu ;
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