Assessment Indices of Littoral Habitat Condition for Lakes in Maine and New England, USA.

ABSTRACT: Littoral habitat is critical for lake biota but is adversely affected by residential shoreland development through the loss and reduced structural complexity of lakeshore vegetation. There currently exists no assessment methodology for evaluating littoral habitat condition of individual lakes in northeastern US. We addressed this assessment need by creating multi-metric indices of littoral habitat condition that focus on lakeshore residential development as the primary stressor. We did this by using habitat metrics derived primarily from National Lake Assessment (NLA) Physical Habitat (PHAB) survey field observations to create Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) models that assign lakeshore stations into littoral habitat condition categories. Lake PHAB survey data were used from New England

SUBMITTER: Deeds J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10642257 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature