Date of Award

9-16-2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Biology, MS

First Advisor

Travis Marsico

Committee Members

Billy Justus; Jennifer Bouldin; Keith Morris

Call Number

LD 251 .A566t 2014 B62

Abstract

Over the past century, the Mississippi Alluvial Plain Ecoregion was altered from forest to agriculture. Associated with increased adjacent agriculture, water quality perturbations identified in Cache River connected depressions included elevated pH, DO, and conductivity. Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling indicated significant changes in the epidendric and benthic diatom communities in relation to conductivity and adjacent agriculture. The communities of less-impacted wetlands were dominated by species in the genera Eunotia, Gomphonema, and Pinnularia shifted towards communities dominated by Diadesmis contenta and Nitschia clausii in the more disturbed wetlands. Also, correlations among autecological metrics showed the relative abundance of planktonic diatoms increased and oligotrophic diatoms decreased with increased nutrient concentrations. This research demonstrates that assemblage condition is related to water quality perturbations and that water quality perturbations of connected depressions can be predicted using adjacent land use. Findings of this study support using diatoms and land use for developing indicators of wetland disturbance.

Rights Management

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.