Aquatic degradation in shallow coastal plain lakes: Gradients or thresholds?
Introduction
The establishment of introduced species in aquatic and wetland habitats is often associated with human-related environmental degradation (Moyle, 1973, Moyle, 1986, Ehrenfeld, 1983, Ehrenfeld and Schneider, 1991, Ehrenfeld and Schneider, 1993, Moyle and Light, 1996, Ashton and Mitchell, 1989, Owen, 1999, Galatowitsch et al., 2000, Green and Galatowitsch, 2002, Marchetti et al., 2004, Zedler and Kercher, 2004, Burton et al., 2005). The concept of degradation thresholds has been used to describe the level of urbanization and associated impervious surface that results in stream impairment (Arnold and Gibbons, 1996, May et al., 1997, Paul and Meyer, 2001, Gergel et al., 2002, Stepenuck et al., 2002). The concept is valid in areas dominated by urban-land use, however it fails to account for the effect of agriculture on the ecological integrity of surface waters in areas with mixed-land uses since both urban land and agriculture can result in water-quality degradation (Johnson et al., 1997, Carpenter et al., 1998, Herlihy et al., 1998, Rhodes et al., 2001) and associated changes in the composition of aquatic communities (Lenat and Crawford, 1994, Wang et al., 1997, Waite and Carpenter, 2000). In the New Jersey Pinelands, the extent of both developed land and upland agriculture must be considered to adequately explain variations in stream-water quality (Conway, 2007, Zampella et al., 2007). Ten-percent altered land, defined as the percentage of developed land and upland agriculture in a drainage basin, has been described as the threshold at which a significant deviation from reference-site water-quality conditions occurred in a major Pinelands watershed (Zampella et al., 2007).
Although the relationship between the presence of nonnative species and aquatic degradation associated with upland-agricultural and developed-land uses is well documented in the blackwater streams of the New Jersey Pinelands (Morgan and Philipp, 1986, Zampella and Laidig, 1997, Zampella and Bunnell, 1998, Zampella and Bunnell, 2000, Zampella et al., 2001, Bunnell and Zampella, 2008), the land-use-related degradation threshold at which the occurrence of nonnative species might occur has not been established. The purpose of this paper is to determine if altered-land-use gradients or thresholds are associated with the presence of nonnative plants, fish, and anurans in Pinelands stream impoundments.
Section snippets
Land use and study-site selection
Most Pinelands lakes are shallow, artificial stream impoundments that were created for sawmills, ironworks, papermaking, and cranberry production (Patrick et al., 1979, Wacker, 1979). We selected 30 impoundments that represented a range of watershed conditions characterized by the percentage of developed land and upland-agricultural land (Fig. 1). Mean lake area (±1 SD) was 16.2 (±11.6) ha. Land-use/land-cover and impervious-surface profiles for watersheds associated with the impoundment were
Water quality
For pH and specific conductance, medians for the 2003–2005 sampling period at all 30 impoundments ranged from 4.1 to 6.8 and 30.2 to 215 μS cm−1, respectively (Fig. 2). Both pH (r = 0.85, p < 0.001) and specific conductance (r = 0.75, p < 0.001) were positively correlated with a disturbance gradient represented by the percentage of altered land in a watershed.
Shoreline habitats
Mean nearshore-water depth ranged from 21 to 60 cm and averaged 41.5 (±9.0 SD) cm. Sediments other than sand or mud (muck or silt) were rarely
Discussion
The association between land-use change and biological invasions is a global phenomenon (Vitousek et al., 1997, Dukes and Mooney, 1999). Although land-use change has been implicated in the occurrence of nonnative species in wetland and aquatic communities in the Pinelands and elsewhere, the threshold at which such invasions occur is not well understood. The purpose of this paper was to determine if altered-land-use gradients or thresholds are associated with the presence of nonnative plants,
Acknowledgements
Jennifer Ciraolo and Kimberly Spiegel assisted with various aspects of the study, including the collection of water-quality samples and data entry. This article is based on a report submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Funding for the study was provided by a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Wetlands Protection State Development Grant CD98237801-0) with additional funding from the National Park Service and the Pinelands Commission. The views and conclusions
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