Office of Research and Development, National Health and Environmental Effects Laboratory, Atlantic Ecology Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Narragansett, RI, 02882, USA.
Department of Natural Resources Science, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, 02881, USA.
Environ Monit Assess. 2019 Mar 27;191(4):252. doi: 10.1007/s10661-019-7401-8.
Estuaries are dynamic transition zones linking freshwater and oceanic habitats. These productive ecosystems are threatened by a variety of stressors including human modification of coastal watersheds. In this study, we examined potential linkages between estuarine condition and the watershed using multimodel inference. We examined attributes at the watershed scale as well as those associated with riparian areas but found that they were highly correlated. We also examined whether attributes closer to the estuary were more strongly related to benthic invertebrate condition and found that this was not generally true. In contrast, variability within the estuary strongly impacted model results and suggests that future modeling should incorporate estuarine variability or focus on the individual stations within the estuary. Modeling estuarine condition indicated that inherent landscape structure (e.g., estuarine area, watershed area, watershed:estuary ratio) is important to predicting benthic invertebrate condition and needs to be considered in the context of watershed/ estuary planning and restoration.
河口是连接淡水和海洋生境的动态过渡带。这些富有生产力的生态系统受到多种胁迫因素的威胁，包括人类对沿海流域的改造。在这项研究中，我们使用多模型推断方法研究了河口状况与流域之间的潜在联系。我们检查了流域尺度的属性以及与河岸带相关的属性，但发现它们高度相关。我们还研究了靠近河口的属性是否与底栖无脊椎动物状况的关系更密切，但发现情况并非总是如此。相比之下，河口内的变异性强烈影响了模型结果，这表明未来的建模应该包含河口的变异性，或者专注于河口内的各个站点。对河口状况的建模表明，固有景观结构（例如，河口面积、流域面积、流域：河口比）对预测底栖无脊椎动物状况很重要，在流域/河口规划和恢复的背景下需要加以考虑。
