Macroinvertebrate responses to watershed land use and local-scale stream restoration

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Violin, Christy Royer
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Biology

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Human land use practices have resulted in the widespread degradation of waterways draining the surrounding landscape, resulting in poorly functioning streams with lower biological diversity than streams in undisturbed watersheds. Stream restoration has become an increasingly popular method for ameliorating local-scale degradation. Current stream restoration methodology reconfigures channel morphology to reflect a pre-degradation ideal, and relies on habitat provision as the primary means to facilitate biotic community recovery. However, there is little information on the success of this approach. This dissertation focuses on the consequences of urban land use for macroinvertebrate stream community structure and the potential for Natural Channel Design, a common reach scale restoration method, to ameliorate stream degradation due to catchment based land use in various catchment types. In two studies examining macroinvertebrate community response to stream restoration, Natural Channel Design did not lead to improvement in macroinvertebrate community structure, and failed to restore habitat in the urban stream restorations surveyed. A structural equation modeling approach suggests that the factors most associated with community degradation are not currently addressed by reach-scale restoration. This suggests a need to shift restoration strategies away from a strictly reach-scale approach to a multi-scale approach which incorporates watershed scale processes.

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"... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Biology. "

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Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Visibility	Actions
		2019-04-11	Public	Download