Hope Dodd

Aquatic Resources of Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield--Natural Resource Condition Assessment Tyler Cribbs, Kevin James (Kevin_James@nps.gov), Hope R. Dodd (Hope_Dodd@nps.gov), David E. Bowles (David_Bowles@nps.gov) Water quality degradation has been a problem at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield since the battlefield was established. Three streams are located in the battlefield: Wilson’s Creek and two of its tributaries, Terrell Creek and Skegg’s branch. A wastewater treatment plant is located 5 km upstream of the park and releases treated effluent directly into Wilson’s Creek. Non-point source pollution (urban runoff, agriculture) has also deteriorated Wilson’s Creek water quality through the years. All of these factors have resulted in Wilson’s Creek being listed as a 303(d) stream for unspecified contaminants. A Natural Resource Condition Assessment (NRCA) was recently completed to evaluate current conditions of resources in the battlefield. NRCAs can provide current conditi...

The National Park Service (NPS) established the Inventory and Monitoring Networks to provide information on ecosystem health and processes to better manage their natural resources. In 2005, the Heartland Network initiated a long-term fish monitoring program at two parks located in the Ozark Plateaus: Buffalo National River, Arkansas (BUFF), and Ozark National Scenic Riverways, Missouri (OZAR). Data on fish communities, water quality, and physical habitat were collected annually at six sites on the Buffalo River at BUFF, and nine sites at OZAR (six on the Current River and three on the Jacks Fork). Nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMS) was used to determine clustering of sample sites based on individual species abundances (catch). At BUFF, we found the upstream-most sample site differed distinctly in species abundance relationships from the remaining five sites. This upstream site is located in a different physiographic region (Boston Mountains), resulting in lower conductivity an...

Watersheds are influenced by local and regional environmental factors that affect surface flows, groundwater sources, and aquatic invertebrate communities. Ozark Plateau geologic structure and karst topography play a key role in structure and function of its streams including water chemistry, hydrology, and temperature. Invertebrate data (2005-2010) and environmental factors from 55 wadeable tributaries of three Ozark rivers, Buffalo River, Arkansas, and Current and Jacks Fork Rivers, Missouri, were analyzed to determine the factors influence on invertebrate community structure and integrity. Major geologic differences between rivers appear to greatly influence community structure, but do not appear to determine overall integrity. Metrics varied among tributaries and between rivers with similar values for all three watersheds showing little indication of disturbance. Distinct park groupings of taxa similarity in relation to environmental factors using non-metric multidimensional sca...

Background/Question/Methods Community structure may vary spatially and temporally. A number of univariate indices have been developed to quantify community structure, although much information is lost in this approach, which results in a single number to describe an entire community. Multivariate methods provide more information-rich results, although they may be more difficult to interpret. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMS) is a nonparametric ordination approach that reduces the dimensionality of a complex data set to two or three dimensions, which can be easily interpreted visually. Communities can be compared in reduced-dimensionality ordination space, and important habitat or environmental variables may be inferred by evaluating the strength of the correlation between each variable and the ordination axes. We used NMS as part of a long-term monitoring project to compare structure in fish communities in two river systems: the Buffalo National River (BUFF) in northern Arkan...

A shift in species distribution and displacement caused by anthropogenic disturbance and climate change may affect how agencies manage and conserve fish populations. The Ozark National Scenic Riverways, in southeast Missouri, USA, has populations of both Smallmouth Bass Micropterus dolomieu (SMB) and Largemouth bass Micropterus salmoides (LMB) with SMB historically dominating. The Riverways are influenced by several large springs distributed longitudinally through the park which greatly influence its thermal regime. However, with warming temperatures LMB and piscivore species may become more abundant, displacing the dominating SMB. We used fish community samples from seven sites sampled seven times from 2005-2013 to determine if abundance, size structure, and condition of SMB are influenced by LMB or piscivore (LMB, chain pickerel, shadow bass, spotted bass, and yellow bullhead) abundance. Additionally, water temperature, discharge, and wetted width were compared to SMB, LMB, and pi...

The diversity of Illinois' streams provides a broad range of conditions, and thus a variety of restoration techniques may be required to adequately compensate for watershed alterations. Resource management agencies and research institutions in the state have collaborated on a variety of applied research initiatives to assess the efficacy of various stream protection and restoration techniques. Constructed pool-and-riffle structures have