Monitoring Fish Diversity in Massies Creek, Ohio

Streams are susceptible to numerous threats to their water quality and biodiversity. In our region of southwest Ohio a major driver of these impacts is associated with current and past agricultural practices. These changes include straightening, embanking, dredging, and removal of large rocks and woody debris, increased erosion, and non-point source pollution. These structural and chemical impacts are known to significantly affect biodiversity in these streams. This means a greater understanding of stream ecology is of utter importance to places such as Greene County, Ohio due to the prevalence of agricultural practices in the landscape. In 2010 a 2.2 mile stream restoration project was completed by Greene County on the north fork of Massie’s Creek. Biological surveys and stream monitoring began in 2011 and extended on a regular basis through Fall 2014. In our study, conducted in the fall of 2014, we expanded the scope to evaluate fish biodiversity at previously studied sites as well as four additional sites within the watershed. Our objective was to collect data in order to draw comparisons between 2014 and previous year’s data including a study conducted in 1955 on Massie’s Creek. We sampled in six different locations, once in all six sites and twice in two specific sites. We used a mix of restored, unrestored, and unaltered stretches of stream as our sample locations. To determine diversity we used two different diversity indices: Shannon (H) and Simpson’s (D). Our Shannon value for the common unrestored site was 1.46 and our Simpson’s value was 0.33. Our Shannon value for the common restored site was 1.22 and our Simpson’s value was 0.36. Combining the data from the previous years with the 2014 data we found dominance to have decreased after restoration (which means there was more diversity)