The influence of land use in a highly modified catchment: Investigating the importance of scale in riverine health assessment

Journal of Environmental Management
Sue OedingCaroline Sullivan

Abstract

Riverine landscapes are studied at varying scales, investigating the complex cause-effect pathways between rivers and their physical, chemical and biological attributes. Policy development, management and planning are often formulated and applied at the regional or catchment scale, however the ecological evidence required to inform at this scale is typically collected from the much smaller scale. This research was aimed at determining if patterns in diatom and macroinvertebrate community composition can be attributed to a specific/single land use in a catchment with multiple land uses. The impacts of forest, macadamia, grazing, sugar cane and urban land uses in the Richmond River Catchment of Northern NSW, Australia were investigated at 20 micro-catchment scale sites. A total of 124 diatom species from 43 genera, along with 92 families and three sub-families of macroinvertebrates, were collected and used to calculate the Richmond River Diatom Index (RRDI), AUSRIVAS and SIGNAL2 scores. Statistical analyses showed distinct groupings of land use categories providing evidence of cause-effect pathways attributed to individual land uses. The RRDI, AUSRIVAS and SIGNAL2 scores all showed distinctions between land use categories, though...Continue Reading

Citations

Nov 4, 2021·Environmental Monitoring and Assessment·Ana Paula Justino FariaLeandro Juen

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