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Landscape characteristics affecting streams in urbanizing regions of the Delaware River Basin (New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, U.S.)

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Abstract

Widespread and increasing urbanization has resulted in the need to assess, monitor, and understand its effects on stream water quality. Identifying relations between stream ecological condition and urban intensity indicators such as impervious surface provides important, but insufficient information to effectively address planning and management needs in such areas. In this study we investigate those specific landscape metrics which are functionally linked to indicators of stream ecological condition, and in particular, identify those characteristics that exacerbate or mitigate changes in ecological condition over and above impervious surface. The approach used addresses challenges associated with redundancy of landscape metrics, and links landscape pattern and composition to an indicator of stream ecological condition across a broad area of the eastern United States. Macroinvertebrate samples were collected during 2000–2001 from forty-two sites in the Delaware River Basin, and landscape data of high spatial and thematic resolution were obtained from photointerpretation of 1999 imagery. An ordination-derived ‘biotic score’ was positively correlated with assemblage tolerance, and with urban-related chemical characteristics such as chloride concentration and an index of potential pesticide toxicity. Impervious surface explained 56% of the variation in biotic score, but the variation explained increased to as high as 83% with the incorporation of a second land use, cover, or configuration metric at catchment or riparian scales. These include land use class-specific cover metrics such as percent of urban land with tree cover, forest fragmentation metrics such as aggregation index, riparian metrics such as percent tree cover, and metrics related to urban aggregation. Study results indicate that these metrics will be important to monitor in urbanizing areas in addition to impervious surface.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Mike Bilger, John Byrnes, and Ward Hickman for data collection, Alex Hoppus and Jose Callejas for photointerpretation, and Richard Birdsey for supporting portions of this work through the Collaborative Environmental Monitoring and Research Initiative. This study was completed as part of the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment Program. We greatly appreciate the helpful comments of two anonymous reviewers. We also thank Jim Coles, Karin Limburg and Cathy Tate for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. U.S. Geological Survey, New York Water Science Center, 425 Jordan Road, Troy, NY, 12180, USA

    Karen Riva-Murray & Peter Murdoch

  2. U.S. Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis, Northern Research Station, 425 Jordan Road, Troy, NY, 12180, USA

    Rachel Riemann

  3. U.S. Geological Survey, New Jersey Water Science Center, 810 Bear Tavern Rd., West Trenton, NJ, 08628, USA

    Jeffrey M. Fischer

  4. U.S. Geological Survey, Pennsylvania Water Science Center, 215 Limekiln Rd., New Cumberland, PA, 17070, USA

    Robin Brightbill

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  1. Karen Riva-Murray
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  2. Rachel Riemann
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  4. Jeffrey M. Fischer
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  5. Robin Brightbill
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Correspondence to Karen Riva-Murray.

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Riva-Murray, K., Riemann, R., Murdoch, P. et al. Landscape characteristics affecting streams in urbanizing regions of the Delaware River Basin (New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, U.S.). Landscape Ecol 25, 1489–1503 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-010-9513-y

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