Short-term Variation in Temperature and Precipitation is Not Correlated with MiCorps Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Scores
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Authors
Horal, Meghan M.
Issue Date
2018
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Watersheds provide incredibly valuable ecosystem services such as water purification, flood prevention, and water retention. Streams and lakes provide recreation, agriculture, and industry. Kalamazoo County in southwest Michigan has a vibrant urban and agricultural community around the Kalamazoo River and its tributaries. To make sure the Kalamazoo River watershed is healthy and can continue to provide ecosystem services, water quality assessment is necessary. Macroinvertebrates are a valuable bio indicator of water quality. Michigan Clean Water Corps (MiCorps) is a group of volunteers who have taken macroinvertebrate samples from streams all throughout Michigan, including Kalamazoo County, to provide water quality data to policymakers, organizations, and individuals. Short term temperature variability and precipitation cause many changes in macroinvertebrate environment that could kill populations and change the community makeup. This study aimed to provide a reason for local trends in stream quality scores between different pollution tolerance groups of macroinvertebrates by correlating them against temperature variability and precipitation that occurred in the days leading up to the samples being taken. Five MiCorps sites were used in this analysis which provided a total of 24 macroinvertebrate samples over the course of five years. While no significant correlation was found, this implies that there may be other factors that affect how temperature and precipitation affect a community as well as that short term (15 days) monitoring and variability is not long enough to see an impact.
Description
v, 32 p.
Citation
Publisher
Kalamazoo College
License
U.S. copyright laws protect this material. Commercial use or distribution of this material is not permitted without prior written permission of the copyright holder.