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Environmental Sciences

University of Kentucky

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Water quality

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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Occupancy And Abundance Of Stream Salamanders Along A Specific Conductance Gradient, Jacob M. Hutton, Steven J. Price, Simon J. Bonner, Stephen C. Richter, Christopher D. Barton Sep 2020

Occupancy And Abundance Of Stream Salamanders Along A Specific Conductance Gradient, Jacob M. Hutton, Steven J. Price, Simon J. Bonner, Stephen C. Richter, Christopher D. Barton

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

In the Central Appalachians (USA), mountaintop-removal mining accompanied by valley fills often leads to streams with elevated specific conductivity (SC). Thus, the ionic composition of freshwaters in this region is hypothesized to be a driver of the distribution and abundance of freshwater taxa, including stream salamanders. We examined the association between SC and stream salamander populations by conducting salamander counts in 30 southeastern Kentucky streams across a continuous gradient of SC that ranged from 30 to 1966 μS/cm. We counted 2319 salamanders across 5 species and, using a hierarchical Bayesian version of the N-mixture model, found a negative association between …


Assessment Of Streamside Management Zones For Conserving Benthic Macroinvertebrate Communities Following Timber Harvest In Eastern Kentucky Headwater Catchments, Joshua K. Adkins, Christopher D. Barton, Scott Grubbs, Jeffrey W. Stringer, Randall K. Kolka Jun 2016

Assessment Of Streamside Management Zones For Conserving Benthic Macroinvertebrate Communities Following Timber Harvest In Eastern Kentucky Headwater Catchments, Joshua K. Adkins, Christopher D. Barton, Scott Grubbs, Jeffrey W. Stringer, Randall K. Kolka

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Headwater streams generally comprise the majority of stream area in a watershed and can have a strong influence on downstream food webs. Our objective was to determine the effect of altering streamside management zone (SMZ) configurations on headwater aquatic insect communities. Timber harvests were implemented within six watersheds in eastern Kentucky. The SMZ configurations varied in width, canopy retention and best management practice (BMP) utilization at the watershed scale. Benthic macroinvertebrate samples collected one year before and four years after harvest indicated few differences among treatments, although post-treatment abundance was elevated in some of the treatment streams relative to the …