Wednesday, June 6, 2007 - 8:00 AM
183

Biological Assessment of the Lake Allatoona/Upper Etowah River Watershed, Georgia

James B. Stribling1, Colin R. Hill1, Michael Morrissey2, and David Kubala2. (1) Center for Ecological Sciences, Tetra Tech, Inc., 400 Red Brook Blvd., Suite 200, Owings Mills, MD 21117-5159, (2) Cherokee County Water and Sewerage Authority, 1957 Authority Drive, Woodstock, GA 30189

The Lake Allatoona/Upper Etowah River (LA/UE) watershed is bounded on its downstream extremity by the USACE Lake Allatoona Dam, and spans approximately 1,120 mi2 covering wholly or in part 9 northern Georgia counties. The design of this monitoring program allows use of results from field sampling and indicator analyses to provide an ecological assessment of the watershed at multiple spatial scales.  Physical, chemical, and biological sampling at 53 randomly selected wadeable stream sites throughout the upper basin, and biological analyses using a multimetric index (MMI), resulted in an overall watershed assessment with a narrative rating of “fair” (mean MMI=2.5, std.=0.9). On a 5-category framework, 12 percent of the individual sites rated as very poor; 38 percent as poor; 38 percent fair; 10 percent good; and 2 percent, very good. The highest density of degraded streams was observed in the Little River and Lower Allatoona Creek subwatersheds, due mostly to greater urbanization, and the associated stressors arising from that land use. However, several subwatersheds in the more upstream areas of the northeast also rated as fair or poor, likely due to isolated pockets of agricultural or silvicultural activities; small, restricted development areas; or the potential for continued effects from legacy stressors.

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