Effects of Improved Sewage Effluent Management and Urbanization on Fish Associations of Toronto Streams

Wichert, Gordon A.

doi:10.1577/1548-8675(1995)015<0440:eoisem>2.3.co;2

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…For comparison, we generated scores of three other published indices (Minns et al's (1994) Fish IBI, Wichert's (1995) WSATI-WQ, and Wichert and Lin's (1996) WSATI-WT) using fish information collected from Frenchman's Bay (Table 5). The 12 metric fish IBI scores were slightly higher for the South compared with the North site, but there were no significant differences (paired t test, P = 0.44).…”

Section: Use Of the Wfi To Assess Site Quality In Frenchman's Baymentioning

confidence: 99%

Development and use of the Wetland Fish Index to assess the quality of coastal wetlands in the Laurentian Great Lakes

Seilheimer¹,

Chow‐Fraser²

2006

Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci.

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Abstract:We use fish and environmental data from 40 wetlands of the Laurentian Great Lakes to develop the Wetland Fish Index (WFI), a tool that can be used to assess the quality of coastal marshes. A partial canonical correspondence analysis was used to ordinate fish species along multidimensional environmental axes that accounted for anthropogenic disturbance based on temperature, conductivity, and the presence of pollutants (e.g., suspended solids and primary nutrients). Compared with other measures of fish habitat quality (e.g., Shannon-Wiener diversity index and species richness), the WFI was the only index that was significantly related to the degree of water quality degradation and wetlands condition, as indicated by an independent index of wetland quality, the Water Quality Index (WQI). WQI ranks sites according to deterioration in water quality and is statistically related to the degree of land-use alteration in wetland watersheds. We demonstrate the usefulness of the WFI for detecting intrawetland variation between two sites in a degraded urban wetland, Frenchman's Bay, Lake Ontario, and to distinguish the heavily impacted wetlands in lower Green Bay from the less-impacted marshes in middle and upper Green Bay, Lake Michigan. This was accomplished by using only published fish data without corresponding environmental variables.Résumé : Nous avons utilisé des données sur les poissons et sur le milieu provenant de 40 terres humides des Grands Lacs laurentiens afin de mettre au point un indice ichtyologique des terres humides (WFI, Wetland Fish Index), un outil qui peut permettre d'évaluer la qualité des marais côtiers. Une analyse partielle des correspondances canoniques a servi à ordonner les espèces de poissons le long d'axes environnementaux multidimensionnels qui expliquent les perturbations anthropiques d'après la température, la conductivité et la présence de polluants (par exemple, de solides en suspension et de nutriments primaires). Par comparaison à d'autres mesures de la qualité de l'habitat des poissons (par exemple, l'indice de diversité de Shannon-Wiener et la richesse spécifique), le WFI est le seul qui soit relié significativement à l'importance de la dégradation de la qualité de l'eau et à l'état des terres humides, tel qu'indiqué par un indice indépendant de la qualité des terres humides, l'indice de qualité de l'eau (WQI, Water Quality Index). Le WQI ordonne les sites d'après la détérioration de la qualité de leur eau et montre une corrélation significative avec les modifications associées à l'utilisation des terres dans le bassin versant des terres humides. Nous montrons l'utilité de WFI pour détecter la variation dans un même système entre deux sites dans Frenchman's Bay, lac Ontario, une terre humide urbaine et dégradée; il peut aussi distinguer les terres humides fortement modifiées de la partie inférieure de Green Bay. lac Michigan, des régions moins affectées des parties moyennes et supérieures de la baie. Cela a pu être réalisé à partir seulement des données publiées sur les poiss...

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Section: Use Of the Wfi To Assess Site Quality In Frenchman's Baymentioning

confidence: 99%

Development and use of the Wetland Fish Index to assess the quality of coastal wetlands in the Laurentian Great Lakes

Seilheimer¹,

Chow‐Fraser²

2006

Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci.

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“…High human population densities have the capacity to alter dramatically the watercourses that drain the urbanizing catchment. As progress has been made in controlling the acute effects of point-source pollution, it has become increasingly clear that non-point-source pollution from urban land use, as well as other uses such row-crop agriculture, grazing, and timber harvest, has caused long-term cumulative degradation of stream ecosystems (Jones and Clark, 1987;McDonnell and Pickett, 1990;Wichert, 1995). The conversion of naturally vegetated or agricultural lands to urban environments has increased storm water runoff to streams, which in turn has increased the frequency and severity of flooding, accelerated channel erosion, and altered stream channel forms and bed composi-major changes in aquatic invertebrate (Klein, 1979;Garie and McIntosh, 1986;Jones and Clark, 1987) and fish communities (Klein, 1979;Scott et al, 1986;Steedman, 1988;Limburg and Schmidt, 1990;Imhof et al, 1991;Weaver and Garman, 1994;Wichert, 1994Wichert, , 1995Moscnp and Montgomery, 1997;Wang et al, 1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because of the high natural variation in ecological conditions that typically occurs among watersheds and stream segments (Lyons, 1996), this approach can only detect relatively dramatic effects of urbanization on stream quality. To our knowledge, only three studies (Weaver and Garman, 1994;Wichert, 1994Wichert, , 1995Moscrip and Montgomery, 1997) have compared the same watersheds over time before and after urban development. This "historical" approach has the potential to detect more subtle effects of urbanization, particularly in settings where watersheds had already been impacted by agriculture prior to urbanization.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

WATERSHED URBANIZATION AND CHANGES IN FISH COMMUNITIES IN SOUTHEASTERN WISCONSIN STREAMS¹

Wang

Lyons

Kanehi

et al. 2000

J American Water Resour Assoc

195

150

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We compared watershed land‐use and fish community data between the 1970s and 1990s in 47 small streams in southeastern Wisconsin. Our goal was to quantify effects of increasing urbanization on stream fishes in what had been a predominantly agricultural region. In the 43 test watersheds, mean surface coverage by agricultural lands decreased from 54 percent to 43 percent and urban lands increased from 24 percent to 31 percent between 1970 and 1990. Agriculture dominated the four reference watersheds, but neither agriculture (65–59 percent) nor urban (4.4–4.8 percent) land‐uses changed significantly in those watersheds during the study period. From the 1970s to the 1990s the mean number of fish species for the test stream sites decreased 15 percent, fish density decreased 41 percent, and the index of biotic integrity (IBI) score dropped 32 percent. Fish community attributes at the four reference sites did not change significantly during the same period, although density was substantially lower in the 1990s. For both the 1970s and 1990s test sites, numbers of fish species and IBI scores were positively correlated with watershed percent agricultural land coverage and negatively correlated with watershed urban land uses, as indexed by percent effective connected imperviousness. Numbers of fish species per site and IBI scores were highly variable below 10 percent imperviousness, but consistently low above 10 percent. Sites that had less than 10 percent imperviousness and fewer than 10 fish species in the 1970s suffered the greatest relative increase in imperviousness and decline in species number over the study period. Our findings are consistent with previous studies that have found strong negative effects of urban land uses on stream ecosystems and a threshold of environmental damage at about 10 percent imperviousness. We conclude that although agricultural land uses often degrade stream fish communities, agricultural land impacts are generally less severe than those from urbanization on a per‐unit‐area basis.

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“…bances has improved, it has become evident that non-point source pollution also has contributed to long-term cumulative impacts on stream health (Jones & Clark, 1987;McDonnell & Pickett, 1990;Wichert, 1995). The conversion of naturally vegetated land to industrial, agricultural, commercial, and residential land uses has not only generated contaminants, but also resulted in increased storm-water runoff to streams.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Landscape Based Identification of Human Disturbance Gradients and Reference Conditions for Michigan Streams

Wang

Brenden

Seelbach

et al. 2006

Environ Monit Assess

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Identification of reference streams and human disturbance gradients are crucial steps in assessing the effects of human disturbances on stream health. We describe a process for identifying reference stream reaches and assessing disturbance gradients using readily available, geo-referenced stream and human disturbance databases. We demonstrate the utility of this process by applying it to wadeable streams in Michigan, USA, and use it to identify which human disturbances have the greatest impact on streams. Approximately 38% of cold-water and 16% of warm-water streams in Michigan were identified as being in least-disturbed condition. Conversely, approximately 3% of cold-water and 4% of warm-water streams were moderately to severely disturbed by landscape human disturbances. Anthropogenic disturbances that had the greatest impact on moderately to severely disturbed streams were nutrient loading and percent urban land use within network watersheds. Our process for assessing stream health represents a significant advantage over other routinely used methods. It uses inter-confluence stream reaches as an assessment unit, permits the evaluation of stream health across large regions, and yields an overall disturbance index that is a weighted sum of multiple disturbance factors. The robustness of our approach is linked to the scale of disturbances that affect a stream; it will be less robust for identifying less degraded or reference streams with localized human disturbances. With improved availability of high-resolution disturbance datasets, this approach will provide a more complete picture of reference stream reaches and factors contributing to degradation of stream health.

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Effects of Improved Sewage Effluent Management and Urbanization on Fish Associations of Toronto Streams

Cited by 15 publications

References 17 publications

Development and use of the Wetland Fish Index to assess the quality of coastal wetlands in the Laurentian Great Lakes

Development and use of the Wetland Fish Index to assess the quality of coastal wetlands in the Laurentian Great Lakes

WATERSHED URBANIZATION AND CHANGES IN FISH COMMUNITIES IN SOUTHEASTERN WISCONSIN STREAMS¹

Landscape Based Identification of Human Disturbance Gradients and Reference Conditions for Michigan Streams

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Effects of Improved Sewage Effluent Management and Urbanization on Fish Associations of Toronto Streams

Cited by 15 publications

References 17 publications

Development and use of the Wetland Fish Index to assess the quality of coastal wetlands in the Laurentian Great Lakes

Development and use of the Wetland Fish Index to assess the quality of coastal wetlands in the Laurentian Great Lakes

WATERSHED URBANIZATION AND CHANGES IN FISH COMMUNITIES IN SOUTHEASTERN WISCONSIN STREAMS1

Landscape Based Identification of Human Disturbance Gradients and Reference Conditions for Michigan Streams

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Product

Resources

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WATERSHED URBANIZATION AND CHANGES IN FISH COMMUNITIES IN SOUTHEASTERN WISCONSIN STREAMS¹