Browsing by Author "Govenor, Heather Lynn"

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    Sediment Management for Aquatic Life Protection Under the Clean Water Act
    Govenor, Heather Lynn (Virginia Tech, 2018-01-19)
    Although sediment is a natural component of stream ecosystems, excess sediment presents a threat to natural freshwater ecosystems. Sediment management is complicated because sediment can be dissolved in the water column, suspended as particles in the water column, or rest on the bottom of the stream bed, and can move between these forms (e.g. bedded sediment can be resuspended). Each form of sediment affects aquatic life in a specific way. To manage stream sediment in a way that protects aquatic life, we need to understand the ways different forms of sediment affect living things, and we need to be able to predict how sediment changes form under different stream conditions (for example, during high water events). To improve our understanding of these things, the studies in this dissertation set out to: (1) identify how often sediment is specifically mentioned as the primary pollutant “stressor” of the benthic macroinvertebrate community (primarily aquatic insects); (2) determine which forms of sediment have the largest negative impacts on aquatic insects in Virginia and what levels of sediment may cause harm; and (3) measure the changes of sediment between suspended and bedded forms in a small stream to provide information needed to restore the health of stream ecosystems. An inventory of published US Clean Water Act Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) reports, which states write to identify their impaired waters and their plans to improve those waters, revealed that sediment is an important stressor in over 70% of waters that have altered aquatic insect communities. If the language used to describe how waters are evaluated and what is causing the impairments were standardized among states, data collected under the Clean Water Act could be more broadly used to help understand water quality issues and ways to address them. Analysis of 10 years of Virginia Department of Environmental Quality sediment and aquatic insect community data collected within 5 ecoregions of the state indicates that a combination of 9 sediment parameters reflecting dissolved, suspended, and bedded forms explains between 20.2% and 76.4% of the variability in the health of the aquatic insect community within these regions. Embeddedness, which measures how much larger particles such as gravel and cobble are buried by finer particles like sand; and conductivity, which is a measure of dissolved salts in the water column, both have substantial impacts on the aquatic insect community. Sensitivity thresholds for embeddedness and conductivity indicate the levels of these parameters above which 5% of insect families are absent from a stream; therefore, these levels are considered protective of 95% of the insect community. Thresholds for embeddedness are 68% for the 5 combined ecoregions, 65% for the Mountain bioregion (comprised of Central Appalachian, Ridge and Valley, and Blue Ridge ecoregions), and 88% for the Piedmont bioregion (comprised of Northern Piedmont and Piedmont ecoregions). Thresholds for conductivity are 366 µS/cm for combined ecoregions, 391 µS/cm for the Mountain bioregion, and 136 µS/cm for the Piedmont bioregion. These thresholds can be used by water quality professionals to identify waters with sediment impairments and can be used to help identify appropriate stream restoration goals. A study of sediment movement within the channel of a small stream indicated average transport speeds of ~ 0.21 m/s during floods with peak flows of ~ 55 L/s. The use of rare earth elements (REE) to trace sediment particles revealed individual particle transport distances ranging from 0 m to >850 m. Deposition on a unit area basis was greater in the stream channel than on the floodplain, and the movement of sediment from the stream bed to the water column and back again during sequential floods was evident. Approximately 80% of the tracer was deposited within the first 66 m of the reach. This information can aid the development of models that predict the impact of stream restoration practices on in-stream habitat and improve predictions on the time it will take between the initiation of stream restoration projects and when we see improvements in the biological community.