Premium
Influence of agriculture on in‐stream habitat and fish community structure in Piedmont watersheds of the Chattahoochee River System
Author(s) -
Walser C. A.,
Bart H. L.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
ecology of freshwater fish
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.667
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1600-0633
pISSN - 0906-6691
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0633.1999.tb00075.x
Subject(s) - habitat , agriculture , ecology , watershed , abundance (ecology) , sediment , relative species abundance , geography , environmental science , land use , biology , paleontology , machine learning , computer science
– Historical and contemporary fish collections were used to examine the influence of agricultural land use on fish communities in the central Chattahoochee River, USA. In‐stream habitat data were also collected to examine the relationship between agricultural land use and stream habitat structure. We found a significant positive relationship between agricultural land use and in‐stream sediment ( r 2 =0.43, P =0.01). Stream depth heterogeneity decreased significantly with increased sediment ( r 2 =0.39, P =0.02). Mainstream reaches draining agricultural lands had significantly lower levels of fish diversity than forested reaches ( r 2 =0.47, P < 0.01). Agriculture also explained significant variation in mainstream species abundances but was not a significant predictor of species diversity or species abundances in headwater reaches. Most pool species that use coarse substrates decreased in relative abundance with increasing agriculture in the watershed. Our results suggest that mainstream environments and their associated communities are more susceptible than headwater reaches to the effects of agriculture. This finding has important consequences for conservation, since mainstream reaches are reported to function as species refugia during pulse disturbance events (e. g., floods, droughts).