Tuesday, June 5, 2007
522

Do Post-Mining Constructed Channels Replace Functional Attributes of Headwater Streams?

Ken Fritz1, Stephanie Fulton2, Brent Johnson1, Chris Barton3, Jeff Jack4, David Word4, and Roger Burke1. (1) Office of Research and Development, National Exposure Research Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 26 West Martin Luther King Drive, Mailstop 642, Cincinnati, OH 45268, (2) Region 4, Water Management Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 61 Forsyth Street, SW, Atlanta, GA 30303, (3) Department of Forestry, University of Kentucky, 214 Thomas Poe Cooper Building, Lexington, KY 40546, (4) Department of Biology, University of Louisville, 139 Life Sciences Building, Louisville, KY 40292

Mountaintop removal and valley filling is a method for mining coal in the Appalachians.  Surface coal mining regulations currently recognize constructed drainage ditches associated with valley fills as compensatory mitigation.  Our objective was to determine if these constructed channels are functionally equivalent to natural headwater streams.  Six study watersheds were located in Robinson Forest, Breathitt Co., KY.  Two watersheds were completely mined, two were mined but had intact ephemeral channels, and two were completely intact.  Study reaches within each watershed were stratified across a hydrologic permanence gradient (ephemeral, intermittent, and perennial).  Physical environment, water chemistry, litter standing crop, litter breakdown (Quercus alba and cellulose filters), fungal biomass, microbial respiration, and litterbag macroinvertebrates were monitored from October 2005 – August 2006.  Specific conductance was elevated 30-50X in mined perennial reaches.  The physical environment of constructed channels differed from that of natural channels and differences were most apparent among intermittent reaches.  Litter standing crop at intact reaches was consistently higher than at mined reaches for ephemeral sites, but was not consistently different for intermittent and perennial sites.  Despite strong differences in macroinvertebrate abundance within litterbags, decay rates did not differ between intact and mined reaches.

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