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Identifying Biotic Integrity and Water Chemistry Relations in Nonwadeable Rivers of Wisconsin: Toward the Development of Nutrient Criteria

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Abstract

We sampled 41 sites on 34 nonwadeable rivers that represent the types of rivers in Wisconsin, and the kinds and intensities of nutrient and other anthropogenic stressors upon each river type. Sites covered much of United States Environmental Protection Agency national nutrient ecoregions VII—Mostly Glaciated Dairy Region, and VIII—Nutrient Poor, Largely Glaciated upper Midwest. Fish, macroinvertebrates, and three categories of environmental variables including nutrients, other water chemistry, and watershed features were collected using standard protocols. We summarized fish assemblages by index of biotic integrity (IBI) and its 10 component measures, and macroinvertebrates by 2 organic pollution tolerance and 12 proportional richness measures. All biotic and environmental variables represented a wide range of conditions, with biotic measures ranging from poor to excellent status, despite nutrient concentrations being consistently higher than reference concentrations reported for the regions. Regression tree analyses of nutrients on a suite of biotic measures identified breakpoints in total phosphorus (~0.06 mg/l) and total nitrogen (~0.64 mg/l) concentrations at which biotic assemblages were consistently impaired. Redundancy analyses (RDA) were used to identify the most important variables within each of the three environmental variable categories, which were then used to determine the relative influence of each variable category on the biota. Nutrient measures, suspended chlorophyll a, water clarity, and watershed land cover type (forest or row-crop agriculture) were the most important variables and they explained significant amounts of variation within the macroinvertebrate (R 2 = 60.6%) and fish (R 2 = 43.6%) assemblages. The environmental variables selected in the macroinvertebrate model were correlated to such an extent that partial RDA analyses could not attribute variation explained to individual environmental categories, assigning 89% of the explained variation to interactions among the categories. In contrast, partial RDA attributed much of the explained variation to the nutrient (25%) and other water chemistry (38%) categories for the fish model. Our analyses suggest that it would be beneficial to develop criteria based upon a suite of biotic and nutrient variables simultaneously to deem waters as not meeting their designated uses.

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Acknowledgments

We thank those who helped with data collection, especially Jeff Dimick for macroinvertebrate taxonomy, David Graczyk for water chemistry monitoring, and John Lyons, Kent Niermeyer, and Randy Piette for fish collections. Thanks to Jim Kennedy, Albert Martin, David Saad, and Christopher Smith for help in mapping and quantifying watershed variables. Discussions with Roger Bannerman and Jim Baumann were helpful in designing this study. Paul Rasmussen advised on statistical analyses and, as well as Barbara Scudder, reviewed a draft manuscript. We appreciate reviews from Michelle Bowman, David Cortemanch, Virginia Dale, and Walter Dodds that were used to improve the paper. This study was funded in part through WDNR Watershed Bureau, WDNR Water Division Baseline Monitoring Program, WDNR Bureau of Science Services, Wisconsin Water Science Center of USGS, and Federal Aid in Sport Fish Restoration program Project F-95-P.

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  1. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences Research, 2801 Progress Road, Madison, WI, 53716, USA

    Brian M. Weigel

  2. United States Geological Survey, Wisconsin Water Science Center, 8505 Research Way, Middleton, WI, 53562, USA

    Dale M. Robertson

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  1. Brian M. Weigel
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Correspondence to Brian M. Weigel.

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Weigel, B.M., Robertson, D.M. Identifying Biotic Integrity and Water Chemistry Relations in Nonwadeable Rivers of Wisconsin: Toward the Development of Nutrient Criteria. Environmental Management 40, 691–708 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-006-0452-y

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