Assessing Health of the Little Juniata River Watershed

Abstract

The Little Juniata River is a popular coldwater fishery, however we do not know many of the details of the health of the watershed. Therefore, we initiated a study to quantify the health of the Little Juniata River and its tributaries so that we can classify conditions at the watershed scale. We collected water quality and benthic macroinvertebrates from 38 sites, and we plan on collecting fish and habitat on most of those same sites. This current presentation focuses on our findings for the main stem of Little Juniata River only. We identified benthic macroinvertebrate samples from 10 main stem sites and examined the patterns in community structure as it related to water chemistry and land use attributes. We also calculated the PA IBI from benthic macroinvertebrate data at each site, and then constructed an empirical model that relates PA IBI scores to landscape conditions. We obtained land use data from the Chesapeake Conservancy Landscape Data Project and we analyzed relationships at the segment-level watershed scale. We found that benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages varied greatly among sites on the main stem. Water quality stayed relatively constant. Our analyses herein detail the relationship between benthic macroinvertebrates and land use patterns, and how it can be used for predicting conditions in un-sampled reaches of the main stem. Similar techniques can be used for the entire watershed. Being able to classify stream conditions will allow us to identify high quality areas for conservation and will allow us to identify low quality areas that can be targeted for restoration