•  
  •  
 

STREAM CHARACTERISTICS AND MACROINVERTEBRATE MONITORING THROUGH SEASON CHANGE**

Abstract

Organisms are susceptible to a wide variety of abiotic environmental changes such as temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, nitrate and nitrite concentrations. These environmental factors may especially impact macroinvertebrates that live within rivers differently across seasons. Many of these macroinvertebrates serve as food sources for other organisms and are therefore essential to the integrity of the ecosystem. The presence and relative abundance of macroinvertebrates has been used as a proxy to indicate the water quality of stream systems. We hypothesized that there would be changes observed within the populations of macroinvertebrates and abiotic water quality parameters monitored over seasons. Weekly, from August until November 2024, we surveyed macroinvertebrate populations using methods from Georgia Adopt-a-Stream and took abiotic measurements of water quality parameters in a section of the Little Tennessee River near Dillard, Georgia. Of the parameters tested, only water temperature significantly influenced macroinvertebrate presence and relative abundance (p < 0.05). These results could show how changes in temperature due to global warming might affect aquatic ecosystems such as the Little Tennessee River. The lack of significance from other variables may indicate that we should focus conservation efforts on maintaining current water temperature of streams. Future studies could investigate the impact of different substrates within the streams and their effect on water temperature across seasons.

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS