Assessment Tools for Urban Catchments: Developing Biological Indicators Based on Benthic Macroinvertebrates1

Abstract: Biological indicators, particularly benthic macroinvertebrates, are widely used and effective measures of the impact of urbanization on stream ecosystems. A multimetric biological index of urbanization was developed using a large benthic macroinvertebrate dataset (n = 1,835) from the Baltimore, Maryland, metropolitan area and then validated with datasets from Cleveland, Ohio (n = 79); San Jose, California (n = 85); and a different subset of the Baltimore data (n = 85). The biological metrics used to develop the multimetric index were selected using several criteria and were required to represent ecological attributes of macroinvertebrate assemblages including taxonomic composition and richness (number...

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, NMS, Pacific Coast., Restoration, All tags... management, multimetric index, quantile regression, river, stream, urban gradient, Fewer tags

Development of a local-scale urban stream assessment method using benthic macroinvertebrates: an example from the Santa Clara Basin, California

Article Citation: James L. Carter, Alison H. Purcell, Steve V. Fend, and Vincent H. Resh (2009) Development of a local-scale urban stream assessment method using benthic macroinvertebrates: an example from the Santa Clara Basin, California. Journal of the North American Benthological Society: December 2009, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 1007-1021.

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: hierarchical partitioning, multimetric biological index, predicted biological potential, quantile regression, urban gradient