Measures of Hydrology, Habitat, Toxicity, and Biodiversity

The role of quantitative measures of hydrology and hydraulic watershed properties and their impact on ecological risk assessment was investigated. Pearson correlation coefficients were examined between metrics of ecotoxicology and physically based parameters describing channel, velocity, and flow conditions at each test site. A total of 83 single value ecological endpoints at each site were used. Measures of benthic macroinvertebrate biodiversity, biological habitat condition, sediment toxicity, and in-situ clam toxicity were found to be weakly to moderately correlated with channel geomorphology, flow, and velocity field parameters. For each endpoint, between 30 and 54 test sites were surveyed.