Impacts of urbanization on chloride and stream invertebrates: A 10-year citizen science field study of road salt in stormwater runoff.

ABSTRACT: The use of deicing agents during the winter months is one of many stressors that impact stream ecosystems in urban and urbanizing watersheds. In this study, a long-term data set collected by citizen scientists with the Missouri Stream Team was used to evaluate the relationships between watershed urbanization metrics and chloride metrics. Further, these data were used to explore the effects of elevated chloride concentrations on stream invertebrate communities using quantile regression. While the amount of road surface in a watershed was a dominant factor in predicting the maximum chloride measurement, the median chloride concentration was also strongly related to the amount of medium-to-high density development in the watershed, suggesting that nonmunicipal salt use is an important contrib

SUBMITTER: Haake DM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9790684 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature