Wednesday, May 28, 2008 - 2:00 PM
443

Assessing the beneficial use of great salt lake wetlands

Theron G. Miller, Utah Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Water Quality, 288 North 1460 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84114 and Heidi M. Hoven, The Institute for Watershed Sciences, 1937 Mirror Lake Highway, Kamas, UT 84036.

Utah DEQ received considerable EPA grant and local matching funds to develop and test biological indicators/metrics that reflect the functionality of wetlands surrounding Great Salt Lake. The primary question is whether nutrients from point and nonpoint sources are exceeding the assimilatory capacity of Farmington Bay wetlands and causing impairment to the designated beneficial use which is support for waterfowl and shorebirds and the aquatic life in their food chain. Multiple years of sampling have focused on describing basic ecological functions and important food chain links. Nutrients have been monitored in source waters and sediments and emergent and submerged aquatic vegetation. Associated water quality parameters, including pH and DO were compared to benthic macroinvertebrate and plant community measures. Macroinvertebrate assemblages were typical of those in similar wetland habitats. However, more tolerant taxa dominated sites with elevated nutrient loads. Although several predictable metrics could distinguish these differences, stomach analysis of common shorebirds demonstrated that these tolerant taxa were often the dominant prey items. In turn, nesting success of shorebirds indicate that the beneficial use is being fully supported. These results will be discussed in terms of the goal of Clean Water Act beneficial use assessments and next steps for performing wetland assessments.


Web Page: nutrients, metrics, beneficial uses

See more of Wetlands
See more of Contributed Sessions

See more of The Nabs 56th Annual Meeting (25-28 May, 2008)