USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center SIS Project

Accession Number

5004726

Title

Relations between stream biotic integrity and proportion of annual surface water runoff

allocated for human use

Project Description

This study will pilot an analysis of the relations between stream biotic integrity and proportion of

surface water runoff withdrawn for human use, using existing and newly collected data for the

Georgia portion of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) basin. The ACF basin supports

one of the most diverse freshwater aquatic faunas in the southeastern U.S., including seven

federally-listed species. Rapid growth in population and water use threatens this fauna. This

research is needed to define relations between intensity of water use and integrity of aquatic

communities, in order to support better-informed basin management decisions. Existing data on

runoff, water withdrawals and fish assemblage integrity will be mapped for individual sub-basins of

the ACT. Intensity of water use will be estimated from withdrawals expressed as a proportion of

average annual and monthly discharge during dry, moderate, and wet years. We will conduct

additional field sampling of fishes if necessary to obtain biotic integrity data for up to 30 areas not

recently sampled. We will model relations between metrics of fish assemblage integrity and

intensity of water use, accounting for differences in sub-basin land use.

Keywords

biotic integrity, instream flow, river management,

Principal

Mary C Freeman, USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center: ; Elizabeth Kramer, University of

Investigators

Georgia: ;

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