Assessing relationships between human land uses and the decline of native mussels, fish, and macroinvertebrates in the clinch and powell river watershed, USA

摘要

The free-flowing Clinch and Powell watershed in Virginia, USA, harbors a high number of endemic mussel and fish species but they are declining or going extinct at an alarming rate. To prioritize resource management strategies with respect to these fauna, a geographical information system was developed and various statistical approaches were used to relate human land uses with available fish, macroinvertebrate, and native mussel assemblage data. Both the Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Trichoptera (EPT) family-level index, and the fish index of biotic integrity(IBI) were lowest in a subwatershed with the greatest coal mining activity(analysis of variance[ANOVA], p < 0.05).