Regional nutrient thresholds in wadeable streams of New York State protective of aquatic life

Observer rating of recreational use in wadeable streams of New York State, USA: Implications for nutrient criteria development

“…1). Approximately half of the dataset (100 sites) was reported on previously in the development of regional nutrient thresholds in wadeable streams of NYS for the protection of aquatic life (Smith et al, 2013). A complete discussion of the water quality variables collected e water chemistry (primarily nutrients), biological (macroinvertebrate) communities, and physical habitat measurements is contained in Smith et al (2013).…”

Using SWAT to determine reference nutrient conditions for small and large streams

“…PBIAS for TSS (b±30%) indicated a good performance of the GRSWAT model. Smith et al (2013) using the weight-of-evidence method for wadeable New York State rivers in Ecoregion VIII, the region where the Genesee River is located, are considerably lower (15 μg P/L) than our average value of 34.3 μg P/L (range = 22.9 to 44.8 μg P/L) ( Table 5). (kg P/yr) (μg P/L) (kg P/yr) (μg P/L) (kg P/yr) (μg P/L) (kg P/yr) (μg P/L) (kg P/yr) (μg P/L) (kg P/yr) (μg P/L) Table 4 Average total phosphorus concentration in selected streams of central and western New York.…”

“…However, in many areas where agriculture predominates, the availability of "pristine watersheds" is problematic and has stymied the development of regulatory standards (e.g., Dodds et al, 1998;Smith et al, 2007Smith et al, , 2013Smith and Tran, 2010) despite significant efforts to develop various approaches of identifying reference watersheds. Others suggest that the EMAP approach underestimates boundary criteria (Sheeder and Evans, 2004;Pickett, 1997).…”

“…The weight-of-evidence approach for defining nutrient criteria incorporates various aspects of the chemical and biological approach to define trophic state, along with more refined statistical approaches (percentile analysis, non-parametric deviance, change point determination, cluster analysis) (Smith and Tran, 2010;Smith et al, 2013) to determine change points or boundaries. This approach incorporates into it some of the same limitations of other methods as described above.…”

Diatom taxa and assemblages for establishing nutrient criteria of lakes with anthropogenic hydrologic alteration

“…The concentration of nutrients was important in the determination of dominant diatom species through its influence on other environmental factors acting on diatoms, and the high correlation between the diatom metrics and nutrients was intrinsic to diatoms and widely reported (Potapova and Charles, 2007;Smith et al, 2013). NO x criteria may support a more accurate benchmark than TN, since NO x explained more variations in diatom assemblages than TN criteria.…”