Gangloff Michael M, Perkins Michael, Blum Peter W, Walker Craig
Biology Department, Appalachian State University, 572 Rivers Street, Boone, NC, 28608-2027, USA,
Environ Manage. 2015 Mar;55(3):702-14. doi: 10.1007/s00267-014-0429-1. Epub 2014 Dec 21.
Coal has been extracted via surface and sub-surface mining for decades throughout the Appalachian Mountains. New interest in ridge-top mining has raised concerns about possible waterway impacts. We examined effects of forestry, mining, and road construction-based disturbance on physico-chemistry and macroinvertebrate communities in east-central Tennessee headwater streams. Although 11 of 30 sites failed Tennessee's biocriteria scoring system, invertebrate richness was moderately high and we did not find significant differences in any water chemistry or habitat parameters between sites with passing and failing scores. However, conductivity and dissolved solid concentrations appeared elevated in the majority of study streams. Principal components (PCs) analysis indicated that six PCs accounted for ~77 % of among-site habitat variability. One PC associated with dissolved oxygen and specific conductance explained the second highest proportion of among-site variability after catchment area. Specific conductance was not correlated with catchment area but was strongly correlated with mining activity. Composition and success of multivariate models using habitat PCs to predict macroinvertebrate metrics was highly variable. PC scores associated with water chemistry and substrate composition were most frequently included in significant models. These results suggest that impacts of historical and current coal mining remain a source of water quality and macroinvertebrate community impairment in this region, but effects are subtle. Our results suggest that surface mining may have chronic and system-wide effects on habitat conditions and invertebrate communities in Cumberland Plateau streams.
几十年来，人们一直在阿巴拉契亚山脉通过露天和地下开采的方式采煤。对山顶采矿的新关注引发了人们对其可能对水道产生影响的担忧。我们研究了田纳西州中东部源头溪流中林业、采矿和道路建设造成的干扰对物理化学和大型无脊椎动物群落的影响。尽管30个采样点中有11个未达到田纳西州的生物标准评分系统，但无脊椎动物丰富度处于中等偏高水平，而且我们发现得分合格和不合格的采样点在任何水化学或栖息地参数方面均无显著差异。然而，在大多数研究溪流中，电导率和溶解固体浓度似乎有所升高。主成分分析表明，六个主成分解释了采样点间栖息地变异性的77%左右。与溶解氧和电导率相关的一个主成分解释的采样点间变异性比例在集水面积之后排第二。电导率与集水面积无关，但与采矿活动密切相关。利用栖息地主成分预测大型无脊椎动物指标的多变量模型的组成和成功率变化很大。与水化学和底物组成相关的主成分得分最常被纳入显著模型。这些结果表明，历史和当前的煤矿开采影响仍是该地区水质和大型无脊椎动物群落受损的一个原因，但影响较为微妙。我们的结果表明，露天开采可能会对坎伯兰高原溪流的栖息地条件和无脊椎动物群落产生长期的、全系统范围的影响。
