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The aim of this study was to test the effects of agricultural land use on benthic insect population body-mass and community biomass size spectrum. Agricultural land use effects were assessed by conducting a reciprocal transfer experiment between two stream reaches exposed to differing intensities of row crop and livestock agricultural activity representing best attainable and highly developed agricultural land use scenarios. We found that transferred insect communities showed no change in richness, abundance, distribution or biomass, indicating that exposure to increased agricultural intensity did not have selective lethal effects on transferred benthic insect communities. However, populations of Ephemerellidae and Hydropsyche demonstrated an increase and decrease, respectively, in body-mass following the transfer to the best attainable agriculture site. Furthermore, the community biomass size spectrum at the best attainable agriculture site contained large, predatory insects not found at the intensive agriculture site. Our findings suggest that taxon-specific body-mass and biomass size spectra have the potential to detect environmental effects prior to long-term community changes. Further research is needed to explore the mechanisms by which changes in the biomass size spectrum link agricultural intensity to shifts in benthic insect community structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Using human activity and stream biota data collected from 160 small (600–3000ha) watersheds in rural southwestern Ontario, we determined the relative ability of three commonly used methods of describing fish and benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages (i.e., metrics, presence/absence, and relative abundance) to assess the biological effects of reach and basin scale human activity. Analyses indicated that benthic macroinvertebrate presence/absence was more strongly correlated with human activity at both reach and basin scales than fish presence/absence, benthic macroinvertebrate or fish relative abundance, and metrics derived from benthic macroinvertebrates or fish data. However, sites exhibiting lower levels of human activity were, in some cases, better differentiated by relative abundance. The use of metrics did not provide any additional information regarding the effects of human activities and regularly appeared to underestimate differences between moderately exposed sites and sites exposed to low or very high levels of human activity. Tests for redundancy between fish and benthic macroinvertebrates indicated that they respond differently to the same type and extent of human activity suggesting that the assemblages are sensitive to different stressors emanating from the same activities. There was also a disparity between assemblages with regards to which scale they were most strongly associated as fish were more associated with human activities at the basin scale whereas benthic invertebrates were most strongly associated with the activities at the reach scale. Finally, there was no apparent advantage to describing human activities at multiple scales as predicted basin scores were highly correlated among scales, a finding that may be attributable to the homogeneity of rural environments. Similar studies need to be conducted for a broader spectrum of human activities across a larger geographic extent to determine if these findings are widely applicable. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Bioassessment is based upon the premise that biological assemblages have predictable relationships with the surrounding natural and human environments. As the nature of these relationships can vary from region to region, it is important that environment–biota relationships be established prior to the initiation of any bioassessment program. In this study, multivariate analysis was used to establish how fish and benthic macroinvertebrate (BMI) assemblages in southwestern Ontario streams vary across natural and human activity gradients. The use of canonical correspondence analysis allowed us to determine that changes in community composition of both fish and BMI are strongly correlated with variation in the extent of human activity. The primary source of variation in community composition across activity gradients appeared to reflect a shift from intolerant to tolerant taxa as the extent of human activity increased. Habitat and feeding traits, for BMI and fish respectively, accounted for a secondary source of variation primarily attributable to differences in the extent of human activity at the reach scale. However, variation in human activity, especially at the basin scale, covaried with the dominant natural gradient of surface geology, making interpretation of the results difficult. Implications for bioassessment studies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Light, temperature, and discharge control stream metabolism, but the response of gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (ER) to seasonal variation in these physical drivers may differ in accordance with the types of human activities present in the catchment. Our study examined three mid-order streams in southern Ontario, Canada that differed in anthropogenic nutrient sources (i.e., sewage treatment plant effluent, sewage lagoon effluent, and agriculture), but had comparable light, temperature, and discharge regimes. For each stream, GPP and ER were estimated daily from June through November. Comparisons of paired daily metabolic rates revealed pairwise differences among all streams, with streams receiving sewage effluent having greater rates and variability of GPP and ER than the stream draining agricultural land. The two sewage influenced streams differed only in ER. Temporal patterns of GPP and ER were correlated for all streams throughout the study period and were most affected by seasonal variation in temperature, whereby effluent receiving streams responded more rapidly to increases in temperature. Our findings suggest that managers may need to balance effects of human activities with regional environmental constraints on stream metabolism to maintain and enhance the ecological condition and services of stream ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Cumulative effects of human activities are widespread in developed regions. • We assessed effects of agriculture and sewage effluent on stream communities. • Macroinvertebrate and diatom assemblage conditions declined with nutrient enrichment. • Enrichment effects were conditional on upstream nutrient status. • Assessment design needs to account for complexities in multi-use catchments. Human impacts on stream ecosystems are expected to intensify with population growth and climate change. Decisive information on how stream communities respond to cumulative human impacts is therefore integral for protecting streams draining multi-use catchments. To determine cumulative influences of nutrient enrichment and assess more nuanced approaches for the evaluation of human impacts, we present results from one factorial and two gradient assessment designs applied to benthic algae and macroinvertebrate data from 14 mid-order streams in southern Ontario, Canada with pre-existing human impacts (i.e., sewage effluent and agriculture). We found that among stream variability in ecological indicators measured downstream of sewage effluent outfalls confounded our generalized factorial assessment and provided inconclusive information on a known human impact. Despite our gradient assessment also not having strong statistical support, accounting for the extent of nutrient enrichment associated with differences in sewage effluent and agricultural inputs revealed that larger longitudinal changes in stream communities were associated with increased nutrient enrichment. However, re-weighting our nutrient enrichment gradient based on upstream nutrient concentrations to account for nonlinearities in the response of stream communities to nutrient enrichment produced more robust assessment results that were consistent with predicted effects of nutrients on stream ecosystems. Thus, while our factorial assessment suggests that the communities are resistant to nutrients from cumulative human impacts, our targeted gradient assessment demonstrates that the effects of nutrient enrichment are highly conditional on upstream ecosystem conditions. Future assessments may need to go beyond traditional approaches (i.e., impact presence/absence) and more explicitly consider the environmental stressors and their associated complexities related to the impact under investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioassessment assumes that ecological conditions remain stable in the absence of environmental changes. Evidence suggests this assumption may hold for reference streams, but knowledge gaps remain for impacted streams. Our study quantified interannual variation of benthic macroinvertebrate communities, monitored for at least 14 years in eight impacted streams in the Upper Thames River watershed in Ontario, Canada. Benthic communities exhibited moderate interannual variation in relative abundance of EPT (Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera) and Chironomidae taxa. Year-to-year changes were reflected in lower community persistence than that observed in studies of reference streams. In contrast, tolerance-based metrics showed minimal interannual variation, suggesting compositional changes were because of taxonomic substitutions, in which one tolerant taxon replaced another. Analyses indicated limited directionality in temporal variation for most bioassessment metrics. An exception was taxa richness, which increased at most sites, possibly because of changes in subsampling. However, no associations between calculated bioassessment metrics and measured environmental factors (stream flow and water chemistry) or sampling procedures were observed. We conclude interannual variation in ecological conditions can be substantial and may not be associated with deterministic factors routinely measured in stream assessments. We recommend increased sampling frequency and traits-based assessment as options for limiting effects of interannual variation on assessment results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]