Catchment land use as a predictor of the macroinvertebrate community changes between inlet and outlet of small water dams

Abstract

Changes in land use practices have affected the integrity and the quality of stream water worldwide. Effective catchment management, in terms of land use alteration, depends on our ability to quantify ecologically significant changes and to discriminate among varying levels of impact. In this study, we assessed the structural and functional changes upstream and downstream of eight small water reservoirs in western Slovakia and the relationship between these changes and shifts in physicochemical parameters as a consequence of stream damming and catchment land use. Dams were categorized into two groups, the first with both inlet and outlet situated in deforested and agricultural landscape and the second with inlet flowing through natural and forested landscape, while outlet is situated in deforested and urban region. Using a "between-groups" principal components analysis and a "between-groups" fuzzy principal components analysis, we found significant differences in structural and functional composition of macroinvertebrate communities between inlets with forested catchment and outlets flowing through agricultural, urban landscape. The structural dissimilarity is best explained by the physicochemical and biological characteristics of the aquatic environment, while functional variation of communities is best explained by land use of an area surrounding the stream. The distance in structural and functional community composition between inlet and outlet was linked with difference in environmental conditions between these habitats. The change of structural community composition significantly reflected shift in the water temperature and phosphorus concentration, while the change of functional community composition was determined by change of nutrient concentrations (e.g., PO4, NO3, NH4) and pH.

Keywords: Functional diversity; Land cover; Species richness; Species traits; Water reservoir.