Water and Sediment Quality in the Clinch River,Virginia andTennessee,USA, over Nearly Five Decades

Abstract

The Clinch River, in eastern United States, supports a diverse freshwater fauna including endangered mussels. Although mussel populations are stable in the Clinch's northeastern Tennessee segment, long-term declines have been documented upstream in Virginia. We analyzed water and sediment quality data collected by government agencies from the 1960s through 2013 in an effort to inform current management. The river was divided into sections considering data availability and major tributaries. We tested for spatial differences among river sections and for temporal trends, and compared measured values to potentially protective levels if available. Ammonia concentrations approaching and exceeding protective levels were recorded, most often during the 1970s and 1980s in upstream sections. Sediment metals occurred at levels potentially causing biological effects, mainly during the 1980s and 1990s. In the 2000s, water-column metals have been well below protective levels for general aquatic life. Dissolved solids (DS) increased in most river sections over the study period but mussel-specific protective levels are not known. Analysis of water pH, total N, and total P did not generate conservation concern. Enhanced monitoring for sediment metals, water-column metals, and ionic composition of DS; closer alignment of agency water monitoring practices in the two states; and research to determine biological effects of DS at current and anticipated levels can aid future conservation management.(KEY TERMS: rivers/streams; water quality; metals; nutrients; dissolved solids; freshwater mussels.) Price, Jennifer E.

Spatial and temporal relationships among watershed mining, water quality, and freshwater mussel status in an eastern USA river

“…Our findings for the Powell River are similar to what has been observed in the lower Clinch River, where mussel declines correspond temporally with increasing trends for DS, likely of mining origin, and where mussel status improves with distance from a primary miningorigin DS source: water influx to the Clinch by the Guest River Jones et al, 2014;Price et al, 2014;Zipper et al, 2014). This correspondence of observations for the two rivers adds urgency to the essential questions.…”

“…the total mass of mining-disturbed materials exposed to environmental waters is influential. Price et al (2014) also noted increasing temporal trends for DS in the Clinch River, which is similarly influenced by Appalachian surface coal mining that has occurred continuously and progressively over a multi-decade study period.…”

“…Data observations considered erroneous were identified and deleted (Zipper et al, 2002;Price et al, 2014). If N1 observations of a variable were recorded on the same day at the same location, those values were averaged.…”

Effects of environmentally relevant mixtures of major ions on a freshwater mussel

“…Prior research has found spatial and temporal associations of elevated TDS concentrations with freshwater mussel declines in the Clinch River in Virginia (Johnson et al, 2014;Price et al, 2014), suggesting that elevated major ions may be causing toxicity in the Clinch River. This idea also applies to the Powell River, where TDS concentrations are substantially higher in the upper reaches of the river and mussel populations have experienced long-term declines at monitoring locations downstream of these high TDS reaches (Ahlstedt et al, 2005;Johnson et al, 2012).…”

“…1). Long-term water quality monitoring of the Clinch and Powell Rivers has documented increasing temporal trends of TDS concentrations since the 1960s (Price et al, 2011(Price et al, , 2014. Independent biological monitoring, initiated in 1979, has documented significant declines of freshwater mussel richness and density in sections of Clinch River and throughout the Powell River (Ahlstedt et al, 2005;Johnson et al, 2012;Jones et al, 2014).…”