Insights into Human Impacts on Streams from Tolerance Profiles of Macroinvertebrate Assemblages |
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Authors: | Bruce C Chessman Paul K McEvoy |
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Institution: | (1) New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage, PO Box 3720, Parramatta, NSW 2124, Australia;(2) Australian Water Quality Centre, Adelaide, SA, Australia |
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Abstract: | We present the concept of assemblage tolerance profiles (ATPs) as an aid to freshwater bioassessment, and illustrate it with
a practical example. An ATP describes the proportion of taxa in an observed assemblage that is estimated to tolerate each
level of a specific stressor within a defined range. We used an extensive compilation of biomonitoring field data to estimate
the lower tolerances for pH and dissolved oxygen (DO) of common families of macroinvertebrates in rivers of south-eastern
Australia. These limits were then used to establish ATPs for macroinvertebrate assemblages at 30 sites across six river systems
with varying levels of exposure to drainage from disused mines and discharges from sewage treatment plants. We hypothesised
that sites with more exposure to mine drainage would have ATPs indicating greater tolerance of low pH, whereas sites with
more exposure to sewage discharges would have ATPs indicating greater tolerance of low DO, and found that these hypotheses
were confirmed for five of the six river systems. We suggest that stressor-specific ATPs, based on tolerances derived from
either field distributions or laboratory tests, can help to verify or eliminate candidate causes of inferred human impacts
on aquatic ecosystems. |
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