United States
                    Environmental Protection
                    Agency
                                               Office of Research
                                               and Development
                                               Washington, DC 20460
EPA620R-02-001H
  December, 2004
  4ģEPA    Coastal  Communications

          AN  APPROACH TO COMPARING BIOTIC CONDITIONS
             OF STREAMS  AND ASSOCIATED  SALT MARSHES
                                   (ORD & OW)
Background
Streams are lifelines linking land and sea. They receive water drainage from discrete land areas
known as watersheds and they also influence coastal wetlands including salt marshes. The quality
of water from streams, as well as the lakes and groundwater
that feed them, is influenced  by land use.  The U.S. EPA's
Office of Water (OW) has developed a watershed approach to
resource management that focuses not only on water
resources (e.g. streams, wetlands,  lakes, and estuaries), but
also on the land area that eventually drains into them.
Approach
Researchers at EPA's Office of Research and Development
(ORD), National Health and Environmental Effects Research
Laboratory (NHEERL), are using OW's watershed approach to
investigate critical linkages between land use, stream
condition, and  biotic integrity of coastal salt marshes.  The
goal is to compare indicators (measures) of stream condition
with analogous indicators for the coastal salt marshes  that
receive this stream discharge. Research staff are using EPA's
Rapid Bioassessment Protocol  (RBP) for wadeable streams to
collect data for indicators of  biology (e.g., insect larvae),
physicochemistry (e.g., total dissolved solids, nutrients), and
habitat integrity (e.g., stream bed material, tree cover) in six
(6) Rhode Island watersheds that are impacted to varying degrees by residential land use (Figure
                                 1). Next, they will compare these stream indicators to
                                analogous  indicators for salt marshes. Some potential salt
                                 marsh indicators include species richness of marsh plants,
                                nutrient enrichment, and spatial coverage of the sensitive
                                 marsh grass, Spartinapatens (Figure 2). This type of
                                 research will support OW's watershed approach by
                                providing and refining biotic indicators to help coastal
                                 managers  better understand the inter-connectedness of
                                ecosystems and  the importance of associated land use.
                                The next phase  of this watershed research will be to move
                                 beyond preliminary assessments to propose indicators for
            Figure 2               comparing stream and salt marsh ecosystems.
                                                                  Figure 1.

Further Information
For further information, please contact Suzanne Lussier at NHEERL's Atlantic Ecology Division (AED) (401)
782-3157, lussier.suzanne@epa.gov: or Cathleen Wigand (AED), (401) 782-3090, wigandcathleen@epa.gov:
Kathleen Kutschenreuter (OW), (202) 566-1383, kutschenreuter.kathleen@epa.gov.

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