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Water
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Disentangling Influences of Natural and Human Factors on Aquatic Ecosystems
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Disentangling Influences of Natural and Human Factors on Aquatic Ecosystems

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Biodiversity and Functionality of Aquatic Ecosystems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2023) | Viewed by 6418

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Lizhu Wang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
International Joint Commission and School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
Interests: aquatic landscape ecology; streams and rivers; aquatic system classification; biomonitoring and bioassessment; distinguishing natural vs. anthropogenic influences on aquatic physicochemical and biological communities
Dr. Yong Cao

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Illinois Natural History Survey, University of Illinois – Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820, USA
Interests: aquatic ecology; multivariate analysis; freshwater monitoring and bioassessment; biodiversity evaluation; ecological data quality and comparability; long-term ecological changes; species-occurrence distribution modeling
Dr. Dana Infante

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
Interests: effects of landscape-scale factors (i.e., geology, land cover, climate) on physical and biological features of river systems; river catchment hydrology and stream channel geomorphology; ecological assessment; sustainable management of aquatic systems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The characteristics of aquatic systems are determined by natural factors (e.g., geology, soil, topography, climate, biotic dispersal and accessibility) and anthropogenic factors (e.g., changes in land use/cover, intensity of point and non-point pollution, ecoservice extraction, unintended feedback of resource management, invasive species, population density and migration) at different temporal and spatial scales. In addition, human-induced climate change has a strong influence on both natural and anthropogenic factors. Hence, it is imperative to include and distinguish natural and anthropogenic factors in the study of aquatic ecosystems, in order to improve science and natural resource management. This Special Issue focuses on the developments, evaluations, reviews, and applications of conceptual frameworks and statistical methods applicable to disentangling the effects of natural environment and human disturbances. Areas of interest include biodiversity conservation, ecosystem restoration, the prediction and adaptation of climate-change impacts, biocriteria development, bioassessment, and resource management.

Water welcomes the submission of reviews and applied, modeling or technological studies on topics including, but not limited to: formulating new bioassessment approaches, proposing novel large-scale monitoring and assessment framework, developing new physicochemical and biological indices or biocriteria, advanced statistical methods or modeling, and exploring new visions for future bioassessment and monitoring.

Dr. Lizhu Wang
Dr. Yong Cao
Dr. Dana Infante
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • aquatic systems
  • anthropogenic impact
  • watershed
  • bioassessment
  • monitoring
  • biocritera
  • statistical approach

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

Jump to: Review

19 pages, 8822 KiB  
Article
Assessing Impacts of Human Stressors on Stream Fish Habitats across the Mississippi River Basin
by Jared A. Ross, Dana M. Infante, Arthur R. Cooper, Joanna B. Whittier and Wesley M. Daniel
Water 2023, 15(13), 2400; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15132400 - 29 Jun 2023
Viewed by 1253
Abstract
Effective conservation of stream fishes and their habitats is complicated by the fact that human stressors alter the way in which natural factors such as stream size, catchment geology, and regional climate influence stream ecosystems. Consequently, efforts to assess the condition of stream [...] Read more.
Effective conservation of stream fishes and their habitats is complicated by the fact that human stressors alter the way in which natural factors such as stream size, catchment geology, and regional climate influence stream ecosystems. Consequently, efforts to assess the condition of stream fishes and their habitats must not only attempt to characterize the effects of human stressors but must account for the effects of natural influences as well. This study is an assessment of all stream fish habitats in the Mississippi River basin, USA. The basin supports over 400 stream fish species, drains a land area of 3.2 M km2, and includes a myriad of human stressors such as intensive agriculture, urbanization, nutrient loading, and habitat fragmentation by dams and road/stream crossings. To effectively characterize types and levels of human stressors specifically impacting the basin’s stream fish species, our assessment approach first accounted for the influence of natural landscape conditions on species abundances with multiple steps, including stratifying our analyses by region and stream size and quantitatively modeling the influences of natural factors on stream fishes. We next quantified individual fish species responses to explicit human stressors for different measures of land use, fragmentation, and water quality, including summaries of measures in local vs. catchment extents. Results showed that many species had negative threshold responses to human stressors and that impacts varied by species, by region, and by the spatial extents in which stressors were summarized. Our spatially explicit results indicated the degree of stream reach impairment for specific stressor categories, for individual species, and for entire assemblages, all of which are types of information that can aid decision makers in achieving specific conservation goals in the region. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Disentangling Influences of Natural and Human Factors on Aquatic Ecosystems)
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25 pages, 1854 KiB  
Article
Using Multiscale Environmental and Spatial Analyses to Understand Natural and Anthropogenic Influence on Fish Communities in Four Canadian Rivers
by Beth L. Sparks-Jackson, Peter C. Esselman, Chris Wilson and Leon M. Carl
Water 2023, 15(12), 2213; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15122213 - 12 Jun 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1273
Abstract
Science-based conservation of riverine fishes can be best targeted with specific information about spatial-ecological controls on the community, including anthropogenic stressors. Because anthropogenic stressors can originate at multiple spatial scales, we investigated the influence of natural and anthropogenic variables summarized within the reach, [...] Read more.
Science-based conservation of riverine fishes can be best targeted with specific information about spatial-ecological controls on the community, including anthropogenic stressors. Because anthropogenic stressors can originate at multiple spatial scales, we investigated the influence of natural and anthropogenic variables summarized within the reach, valley, and catchment on fish community composition along four river mainstems in Ontario, Canada. We used Redundancy Analyses (RDA) to explore models with multi- and single-scale variables on fish community composition. We used partial RDAs to differentiate the relative effects of variable types in multiscale models and to determine if spatial variables explained additional variation in fish community composition. Catchment variables accounted for the majority of explained variation in fish community composition in three of the four rivers, but instream habitat variables accounted for considerable variability in fish community composition in the two rivers that are highly fragmented by dams or naturally occurring rapids. Natural and human-derived fragmentation in rivers may reduce the influence of catchment controls, disrupt longitudinal gradients, and increase the influence of local instream habitat. Environmental variables that explained fish distribution had longitudinal or patchy spatial pattern within rivers, but spatial variables representing impediments to fish dispersal and proximity to receiving waterbodies failed to explain additional variation in fish community composition. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Disentangling Influences of Natural and Human Factors on Aquatic Ecosystems)
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20 pages, 1402 KiB  
Article
Regional Trends of Biodiversity Indices in the Temperate Mesic United States: Testing for Influences of Anthropogenic Land Use on Stream Fish while Controlling for Natural Landscape Variables
by Darren Thornbrugh, Dana Infante and Yinphan Tsang
Water 2023, 15(8), 1591; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15081591 - 19 Apr 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1415
Abstract
The biodiversity of stream fishes is critically threatened globally, and a major factor leading to the loss of biodiversity is anthropogenic land use in stream catchments, which act as stressors to stream fishes. Declines in the biodiversity of stream fish are often identified [...] Read more.
The biodiversity of stream fishes is critically threatened globally, and a major factor leading to the loss of biodiversity is anthropogenic land use in stream catchments, which act as stressors to stream fishes. Declines in the biodiversity of stream fish are often identified by a loss of species or fewer individuals comprising assemblages, but biological degradation can also occur with increases in non-native species and/or the spread of fish tolerant to anthropogenic land use, suggesting the importance of accounting for the distinctness of assemblages along with richness and diversity to best characterize the response of stream fish assemblages to anthropogenic landscape stressors. We summarized stream fish assemblages from 10,522 locations through multiple biodiversity indices and then quantified index responsiveness to natural landscape variables and anthropogenic land use in stream network catchments across five freshwater ecoregions in the temperate mesic portion of the United States. Indices included species richness, Shannon’s diversity, Pielou’s evenness, beta diversity, taxonomic diversity, and taxonomic distinctness. First, we tested for correlations among indices across freshwater ecoregions and found that while species richness and Shannon’s diversity were always highly correlated, taxonomic distinctiveness was not highly correlated with other biodiversity indices measured except taxonomic diversity. Then, we used multiple linear regression to predict biodiversity indices in each of the five freshwater ecoregions to identify significant landscape variables from natural landscape and anthropogenic land uses. Most indices were consistently predicted by catchment area, and many were predicted by elevation, except for beta diversity, emphasizing the importance of these natural landscape variables on biodiversity. In contrast, taxonomic distinctness was often predicted by the amount of urban land use in the catchment, but the direction of the relationship varied. The proportion of agriculture land use in the network catchment was a more consistent predictor of species richness, beta diversity, and Shannon’s diversity. Our analyses show that taxonomic distinctness in freshwater fishes characterize a unique element of biodiversity in relationships with anthropogenic land uses in a streams network catchment. Taxonomic distinctness may also be an effective metric for the bioassessment of stream fishes along with richness and diversity indices to help preserve biodiversity in regard to current and future anthropogenic land uses. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Disentangling Influences of Natural and Human Factors on Aquatic Ecosystems)
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17 pages, 2105 KiB  
Article
Influence of Spatial Extent on Contemporary and Future Threat Evaluation for Imperiled Fluvial Fishes and Mussels
by Arthur R. Cooper, Kevin E. Wehrly, Sung-Kang Yeh and Dana M. Infante
Water 2022, 14(21), 3464; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14213464 - 30 Oct 2022
Viewed by 1404
Abstract
Species conservation often faces many challenges, such as addressing threats from multiple stressor sources, representing under-studied taxa, and understanding implications of spatial extent. To overcome these challenges, we assessed contemporary anthropogenic threats from stream fragmentation and landscape disturbance as well as future habitat [...] Read more.
Species conservation often faces many challenges, such as addressing threats from multiple stressor sources, representing under-studied taxa, and understanding implications of spatial extent. To overcome these challenges, we assessed contemporary anthropogenic threats from stream fragmentation and landscape disturbance as well as future habitat suitability under climate change for traditionally well-studied (fishes) and under-studied (mussels) imperiled fluvial taxa in Michigan, USA. To understand how threats to species vary spatially, predicted habitat suitability was analyzed for three hierarchically nested spatial extents: statewide, within species’ biogeographic ranges, and within river patches fragmented by barriers. Comparison of current and future habitat suitability for 27 fish and 23 mussel species indicates large potential statewide gains for many warmwater and/or large river fishes and several mussel species, however these gains are greatly diminished by biogeographic range limitations and habitat fragmentation among current and future habitats. One mussel species and several cold- and coolwater fishes are projected to have significant habitat losses under climate change irrespective of spatial extent. On average, 79% of habitats for mussels and 58% for fishes were considered moderately to severely disturbed from current human landscape activities. Habitat fragmentation was greater for fishes than mussels, with large dams playing a primary role in fragmenting habitats relative to small dams and waterfalls. Results indicate that threat assessments can vary substantially according to spatial extent and taxa, and consideration of both contemporary and future threats to habitats is needed to inform conservation of imperiled fluvial organisms. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Disentangling Influences of Natural and Human Factors on Aquatic Ecosystems)
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Review

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16 pages, 1249 KiB  
Review
Disentangling Effects of Natural Factors and Human Disturbances on Aquatic Systems—Needs and Approaches
by Lizhu Wang, Yong Cao and Dana M. Infante
Water 2023, 15(7), 1387; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15071387 - 03 Apr 2023
Viewed by 1541
Abstract
Disentangling the effects of natural factors and human disturbances on freshwater systems is essential for understanding the distributions and composition of biological communities and their relationship with physicochemical and biological factors. As the spatial extent of ecological investigations increases from local to global [...] Read more.
Disentangling the effects of natural factors and human disturbances on freshwater systems is essential for understanding the distributions and composition of biological communities and their relationship with physicochemical and biological factors. As the spatial extent of ecological investigations increases from local to global scales, efforts to account for the increasing influence of natural factors become more important. This article synthesizes the current knowledge and commonly used approaches for disentangling these effects on aquatic systems. New understanding has been facilitated by the availability of large-scale geospatial landscape databases that facilitate regional analyses and classifications in conjunction with novel approaches to identify reference conditions and statistical partitioning analyses. This synthesis begins with a summary of how natural factors and human disturbances interactively affect aquatic systems. It then provides an overview of why it is essential to separate the effects of natural factors and human disturbances and a description of examples of landscape databases that make the separation of natural and human factors feasible. It last synthesizes currently-used common approaches for separating the effects of natural factors from human disturbances. Our synthesis assembles representative approaches to disentangling human disturbances in one place to provide new insights that stimulate integrated uses of multiple approaches and the development of new approaches so that management actions can be taken to protect and restore aquatic ecosystem health. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Disentangling Influences of Natural and Human Factors on Aquatic Ecosystems)
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14 pages, 514 KiB  
Review
How to Statistically Disentangle the Effects of Environmental Factors and Human Disturbances: A Review
by Yong Cao and Lizhu Wang
Water 2023, 15(4), 734; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15040734 - 13 Feb 2023
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2026
Abstract
Contemporary biological assemblage composition and biodiversity are often shaped by a range of natural environmental factors, human disturbances, and their interactions. It is critical to disentangle the effects of individual natural variables and human stressors in data analysis to support management decision-making. Many [...] Read more.
Contemporary biological assemblage composition and biodiversity are often shaped by a range of natural environmental factors, human disturbances, and their interactions. It is critical to disentangle the effects of individual natural variables and human stressors in data analysis to support management decision-making. Many statistical approaches have been proposed and used to estimate the biological effects of individual predictors, which often correlated and interacted with one another. In this article, we review nine of those approaches in terms of their strengths, limitations, and related r packages. Among those are hierarchical partitioning, propensity score, the sum of AIC weights, structural equation modeling, and tree-based machine learning algorithms. As no approach is perfect, we offer two suggestions: (1) reducing the number of predictors as low as possible by carefully screening all candidate predictors based on biological and statistical considerations; (2) selecting two or more approaches based on the characteristics of the given dataset and specific research goals of a study, and using them in parallel or sequence. Our review could help ecologists to navigate through this challenging process. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Disentangling Influences of Natural and Human Factors on Aquatic Ecosystems)
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