Responses of benthic macroinvertebrates to environmental changes associated with urbanization in nine metropolitan areas

Cuffney, Thomas F.; Brightbill, Robin A.; May, Jason T.; Waite, Ian R.

doi:10.1890/08-1311.1

Cited by 189 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The patterns C&Q simulated have more in common with their previous analysis of idealized aggregate/ composite community metrics (see Cuffney et al 2010) than with realistic examples of taxon abundances. TITAN was developed for a fundamentally different kind of data, and we have presented it as an unambiguous alternative to aggregate metrics .…”

Section: Unrealistic and Inappropriate Simulated Datasupporting

confidence: 54%

“…In Fig. 2, we show a comparison of C&Q's simulation data to observed data from their own published work (Cuffney et al 2010). The authors offer no substantiation for their claim that their simulated data are common.…”

Section: Unrealistic and Inappropriate Simulated Datamentioning

confidence: 97%

“…However, we used the negative binomial distribution, which incorporated nonnormal error distributions and allowed specification of an appropriate level of overdispersion in the response, in our simulations. We set the dispersion parameter to 0.5 to simulate moderate overdispersion consistent with natural variability in taxon abundances in community data sets (e.g., the National Water Quality Assessment [NAWQA] data in Cuffney et al 2010; Appendix S2; available online from: http://dx. doi.org/10.1899/12-142.1.s2).…”

Section: Unrealistic and Inappropriate Simulated Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, we think it might be helpful to explain what C&Q found and why they found it. Many practitioners accustomed to thinking about biotic change in terms of nonlinear trend lines produced by aggregate community metrics (e.g., Walsh et al 2005, Brenden et al 2008, Cuffney et al 2010) may wonder at discrepancies presented by the critique, despite the flaws in its analytical construct.…”

Section: Change-point Identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We used previously published US Geological Survey NAWQA data from Boston, Massachusetts (richest targeted habitat data [RTH]; Cuffney et al 2010), which we previously analyzed at the community level and presented graphically using combined Quantitative-Qualitative (QQ) presence-absence data along a metro-area normalized urbanization intensity index (MA-NUII) in . Cuffney et al (2010) concluded that this assemblage exhibited linear change in response to urbanization.…”

Section: Synchronicity and Community Changementioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

A critique of the use of indicator-species scores for identifying thresholds in species responses

Cuffney¹,

Qian²

2013

Freshwater Science

Self Cite

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Section: Unrealistic and Inappropriate Simulated Datasupporting

confidence: 54%

Section: Unrealistic and Inappropriate Simulated Datamentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Unrealistic and Inappropriate Simulated Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Change-point Identificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Synchronicity and Community Changementioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

A critique of the use of indicator-species scores for identifying thresholds in species responses

Cuffney¹,

Qian²

2013

Freshwater Science

Self Cite

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Freshwater conservation potential of protected areas in the Tennessee and Cumberland River Basins, USA

Thieme

Sindorf

Higgins

et al. 2016

Aquatic Conservation

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1. The ability of existing protected areas (PAs) to conserve freshwater species and ecosystems has been little investigated. In this study the freshwater conservation potential of PAs was evaluated based on their geospatial attributes and spatial relationship to threats.2. Specifically, the following questions were addressed: (a) to what extent, if any, do PA drainage network location and size affect the potential of PAs to conserve freshwater species and habitats within them?; (b) how are the factors that limit or promote conservation potential distributed in relation to PAs across a region?; and (c) what are the broader implications for how PAs can be designed and managed to contribute to freshwater conservation around the world?3. Eight factors that affect freshwater conservation potential for 297 PAs within the Tennessee and Cumberland River Basins (US) were analysed. Four of these attributes (connectivity, impervious surface area, agricultural land cover, and upstream storage) showed enough variation across PAs such that the effect of PA size, drainage network position, and their interaction on those attributes, was able to be modelled.4. The results support the hypothesis that PA drainage network location and size affect freshwater conservation potential of PAs. Both have a statistically significant effect on each of the four conservation potential attributes, either as a main effect, or through an interaction, although the direction of these relationships is not always intuitive. Of the factors that limit or promote conservation potential, PAs appear to be most often affected by land conversion to agriculture and a loss of connectivity.5. This study underscores the importance of PA managers understanding key internal and external threats so that they can take mitigating or minimizing action, and the need to define PA locations and boundaries within a larger basin context.

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Urbanization reduces and homogenizes trait diversity in stream macroinvertebrate communities

Barnum

Weller

Williams

2017

Ecological Applications

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More than one-half of the world's population lives in urban areas, so quantifying the effects of urbanization on ecological communities is important for understanding whether anthropogenic stressors homogenize communities across environmental and climatic gradients. We examined the relationship of impervious surface coverage (a marker of urbanization) and the structure of stream macroinvertebrate communities across the state of Maryland and within each of Maryland's three ecoregions: Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and Appalachian, which differ in stream geomorphology and community composition. We considered three levels of trait organization: individual traits, unique combinations of traits, and community metrics (functional richness, functional evenness, and functional divergence) and three levels of impervious surface coverage (low [<2.5%], medium [2.5% to 10%], and high [>10%]). The prevalence of an individual trait differed very little between low impervious surface and high impervious surface sites. The arrangement of trait combinations in community trait space for each ecoregion differed when impervious surface coverage was low, but the arrangement became more similar among ecoregions as impervious surface coverage increased. Furthermore, trait combinations that occurred only at low or medium impervious surface coverage were clustered in a subset of the community trait space, indicating that impervious surface affected the presence of only a subset of trait combinations. Functional richness declined with increasing impervious surface, providing evidence for environmental filtering. Community metrics that include abundance were also sensitive to increasing impervious surface coverage: functional divergence decreased while functional evenness increased. These changes demonstrate that increasing impervious surface coverage homogenizes the trait diversity of macroinvertebrate communities in streams, despite differences in initial community composition and stream geomorphology among ecoregions. Community metrics were also more sensitive to changes in the abundance rather than the gain or loss of trait combinations, showing the potential for trait-based approaches to serve as early warning indicators of environmental stress for monitoring and biological assessment programs.

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Responses of benthic macroinvertebrates to environmental changes associated with urbanization in nine metropolitan areas

Cited by 189 publications

References 27 publications

A critique of the use of indicator-species scores for identifying thresholds in species responses

A critique of the use of indicator-species scores for identifying thresholds in species responses

Freshwater conservation potential of protected areas in the Tennessee and Cumberland River Basins, USA

Urbanization reduces and homogenizes trait diversity in stream macroinvertebrate communities

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