Utilizing Secondary and Public Data to Examine Relationships Between Watershed Land Cover and Biotic Integrity in the Lake Erie Tributaries

Abstract

Since the late nineteenth century draining of the Great Black Swamp, the watersheds of the Lake Erie Direct Tributaries (the Tribs) in Northwest Ohio have undergone massive agricultural development and patchy residential and urban growth. Landscapes of these watersheds are currently dominated by large plots of homogeneous cultivated land with patches of urban and residential development and minimal amounts of forest. The effects of intensive agricultural land use and drainage modifications are reflected in the Tribs’ degraded fish communities and loss of riparian habitat. This study attempted to identify the relationships between fish community quality, habitat quality, and land cover variables using secondary data collected from 1993 to 1996 by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) and a maximum likelihood land cover classification of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery. Multiple regression analyses indicated that agriculture is a significant predictor of fish community quality and habitat quality in the Tribs. However, as this area continues to develop residential and urban land cover types may play a larger role in stream quality.