2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH
5/27/2021 | 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM | Relative importance of two correlated variables on aquatic macroinvertebrate communities in a Colorado Front Range river: selenium and urbanization | Virtual Platform
Relative importance of two correlated variables on aquatic macroinvertebrate communities in a Colorado Front Range river: selenium and urbanization
Urbanization and elevated selenium can negatively affect aquatic macroinvertebrate communities. These two factors are often highly correlated in rivers along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, USA. Data collected from three sites in the Big Thompson River, CO in six different years between 2007 and 2017 were used to construct a random forest model with an index of urbanization and dissolved selenium levels as predictor variables to determine the most important factor in predicting the status of aquatic macroinvertebrate communities as measured by the Colorado Multi-metric Index (MMI). Based on the percent increase in mean square error variable importance measure, dissolved selenium has a greater influence on MMI scores than the development index. The significant negative linear relationship between MMI scores and dissolved selenium predicts a MMI of 29.2 under the current dissolved selenium standard of 4.6 ug/L, 38.6 under the suggested lower standard of 3.1 ug/L, and 44 under the average dissolved selenium value (2.16 ug/L). Reduction in dissolved selenium would likely improve MMI scores but other factors may limit the maximum achievable MMI in the absence of selenium as the intercept of the relationship is 57.9.
- Monitoring
- Land use
- Urban
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Presenters/Authors
Andrew Fayram
(), City of Loveland, Colorado, andy.fayram@cityofloveland.org;
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