A web-based tool for assessing the condition of benthic diatom assemblages in streams and rivers of the conterminous United States.

ABSTRACT: Benthic diatom assemblages are known to be indicative of water quality but have yet to be widely adopted in biological assessments in the United States due to several limitations. Our goal was to address some of these limitations by developing regional multi-metric indices (MMIs) that are robust to inter-laboratory taxonomic inconsistency, adjusted for natural covariates, and sensitive to a wide range of anthropogenic stressors. We aggregated bioassessment data from two national-scale federal programs and used a data-driven analysis in which all-possible combinations of 2-7 metrics were compared for three measures of performance. After ranking the best-performing MMIs, we selected the final MMIs by evaluating stress-response relations in independent regional datasets of diatom samples pair

SUBMITTER: Carlisle DM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9533916 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature