Empirical Models of Fish Response to Lake Acidification

Abstract

A large historical data set from the Adirondack region of New York was compiled to study the relationship between water chemistry variables associated with acid precipitation and the presence/absence of selected fish species. The data set was used to examine simple statistical models for fish presence/absence, as a function of the water chemistry variables, for brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush), white sucker (Catostomus commersoni), and yellow perch (Perca flavescens). Of these models, only those for brook trout and lake trout were found to be acceptable based on statistical goodness-of-fit criteria; thus, parameters for models of these two species alone were estimated using maximum likelihood logistic regression. Candidate models for brook trout and lake trout were then examined, with particular consideration for the problems associated with model misspecification, errors-in-variables, and multicollinearity. For each of the two species, a model was recommended that may be used to predict the effect of changes in lake acidification on species presence/absence in lakes in the Adirondack region.

Evaluating the predictive performance of habitat models developed using logistic regression

“…These models are usually fitted using generalised linear modelling (McCullogh and Nelder, 1989) or generalised additive modelling (Hastie and Tibshirani, 1990). For example, logistic regression has been used widely to predict the occurrence and habitat use of endangered vertebrate species (Ferrier, 1991;Lindenmayer et al, 1991;Mills et al, 1993;Pearce et al, 1994;Mladenoff et al, 1999), game species (Straw et al, 1986;Diffenbach and Owen, 1989) and vascular plants (Austin et al, 1990), to examine the response of species to environmental perturbation (Reckhow et al, 1987), and to model the regional distributions of a large number of fauna and flora species to provide information for regional forest conservation planning (Osborne and Tigar, 1992;NSW NPWS, 1994a,b).…”

Assessing ecological quality of shallow lakes: Does knowledge of transparency suffice?

“…Acidification may also lead to enhanced clarity because the phosphorus concentrations are more tightly bound to inorganic substances (e.g Kopacek et al, 2004) and to fish kill, either because of reduced pH or release of toxic substances (e.g. Reckhow, Black, & Stockton, 1987), which may cascade to water clarity. A third aspect is related to the length of the gradient present in our dataset.…”

Ill‐conditioned information matrices, generalized linear models and estimation of the effects of acid rain

“…Other examples are given in Marx and Smith (unpublished manuscripts). The ridge and principal component methods developed here differ from that used by Reckhow et al (1987). In their approach, a principal components analysis of X'X was first applied, followed by a logistic regression run on the leading components.…”

“…Extreme levels of acidification can result in the loss of ecologically and economically important species. One area of recent interest is in the loss of fish species from lakes in the northeastern United States (Reckhow et al 1987). To study the effects of acidification and to build models that would be of use for prediction and description, a data set was developed that contained a presence and absence (e.g.…”