Driving factors in benthic macroinvertebrate community composition - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Driving factors in benthic macroinvertebrate community composition within the Animas River

Alex Ratcliff, M.S. Southern Ute Indian Tribe Water Quality Program

SUIT Water Quality Program

• The WQP strives to improve the quality of surface waters on the Southern Ute

Indian Reservation through monitoring and with projects that employ best management practices.

• Extensive CWA Section 106 and 319 programs
• Recently received Treatment as a State to implement Water Quality Standards

and 401 Certifications

• Within reservation boundaries we have a lot of input from agriculture
• Nutrients are of particular interest

SUIT Water Quality Program

• Monitor the water quality within the reservation boundary
• Checkerboard reservation
• Frequently work with private landowners
• 9 YSI Sondes deployed
• 3 along the Animas River
• pH, DO, Temp, Turbidity, Conductivity
• HOBOware temperature tidbits

Gold King Mine Response Efforts

• Following the GKM Spill SUIT received funding from EPA to monitor

any potential impacts

• Interested in how/if the GKM spill has impacted aquatic health
• Groundwater
• Surface water
• Heavy metals, nutrients/bacteria, macros, sediment
• Do any Pre/Post spill differences exist?

Animas River Sites

• AR 19-3
• AR 16-0
• AR 7-2
• AR 2-7

Surface Water Sampling

• Environmental variables
• 33 total and dissolved

analytes

• 5 nutrient criteria

Macroinvertebrate Sampling

• Early spring and late summer
• Kick samples to represent specific site
• Pre spill samplings that occurred on the Animas in

2014

• Data available on STORET
• 6 sites
• 2 excluded because not sampled again after 2014
• 4 sites
• Twice a year between 2015-2017
• Macro species identified to the lowest practical

taxonomic level

Did the macroinvertebrate communities change as a result of the GKM spill?

• Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
• determine if any of the environmental variables are significantly

impacting community composition

• Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling Ordinations (NMDS)
• community composition, looks for similarities and differences in a

large set of data

Cluster Analysis

Ordinations

Ordinations

NMDS Ordination of Macroinvertebrate Community Composition

Why does this matter?

• Results are within the SUIT Reservation boundary
• Need a more holistic approach
• Cannot necessarily attribute the differences to GKM
• Maybe treatment upstream is what we are seeing
• Did not take macro tissue samples
• Transition focus to more nutrient based concern/assessment?
• Nutrient loading
• ID major tributaries that are contributing
• Look at other watershed within Reservation to see how the Animas compares

Questions?