Abstract
Human development pollutes runoff and ground water. Temporary pools are good habitats to study the influence of general non-point source pollution because they are created by runoff and ground water, among other processes, which, in northern Ohio, can contain substances accumulated over the winter. Furthermore, little information on land-use effects on temporary pools exists. To ascertain if general human activities influenced the water quality of northern Ohio temporary pools, monthly measurements of pH, dissolved oxygen, temperature, conductivity, and depth were monitored from March–June 2004 in 30 dispersed pools of the Cuyahoga River basin, Ohio, USA. Nutrient measurements for most pools were taken in May and June 2004. Pools were located in ten sub-watersheds containing differing percentages of geographic information system (GIS)-delineated urban/suburban and agricultural lands. General water quality characteristics of northern Ohio temporary pools were variable, both spatially and temporally. Nutrient levels were generally low (oligotrophic). Spearman rank correlation coefficients between the characteristics and percent land-use showed that conductivity and percent agriculture were positively correlated, while depth and percent urban were negatively correlated. Temporally, dissolved oxygen and depth showed fairly strong seasonal decreases from March–June. Some measurements from pools in mostly natural sub-watersheds suggested poor water quality. Although large-scale (watershed) land-use influences can affect the physicochemical nature of temporary pools, local anthropogenic influences, both past and present, probably also affect the quality of temporary pool wetlands.
Similar content being viewed by others
Literature Cited
Aelion, C. M., J. N. Shaw, and M. Wahl. 1997. Impact of suburbanization on ground water quality and denitrification in coastal aquifer sediments. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 213: 31–51.
Bachmann, M. D. and R. W. Bachmann. 1994. Larval salamander growth in acidic, low oxygen temporary ponds. Abstract. Verhandlungen Internationale Vereinigung für Theoretische und Angewandte Limnologie 25: 2490.
Beach, D. 1998. The Greater Cleveland Environment Book. EcoCity Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, OH, USA.
Bolstad, P. V. and W. T. Swank. 1997. Cumulative impacts of landuse on water quality in a southern Appalachian watershed. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 33: 519–33.
Bonner, L. A., W. J. Diehl, and R. Altig. 1997. Physical, chemical and biological dynamics of five temporary dystrophic forest pools in central Mississippi. Hydrobiologia 353: 77–89.
Brooks, R. T. 2000. Annual and seasonal variation and the effects of hydroperiod on benthic macroinvertebrates of seasonal forest (“vernal”) ponds in central Massachusetts, USA. Wetlands 20: 707–15.
Brooks, R. T., S. D. Miller, and J. Newsted. 2002. The impact of urbanization on water and sediment chemistry of ephemeral forest pools. Journal of Freshwater Ecology 17: 485–88.
Calhoun, A. J. K., T. E. Walls, S. S. Stockwell, and M. McCollough. 2003. Evaluating vernal pools as a basis for conservation strategies: a Maine case study. Wetlands 23: 70–81.
Clapham, W. B. Jr. 2003. Continuum-based classification of remotely sensed imagery to describe urban sprawl on a watershed scale. Remote Sensing of Environment 86: 322–40.
Colburn, E. A. 2004. Vernal Pools. Natural History and Conservation. The McDonald and Woodward Publishing Company, Blacksburg, VA, USA.
Crosbie, B. and P. Chow-Fraser. 1999. Percentage land use in the watershed determines the water and sediment quality of 22 marshes in the Great Lakes basin. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 56: 1781–91.
Dale, J. M., B. Freedman, and J. Kerekes. 1984. Acidity and associated water chemistry of amphibian habitats in Nova Scotia. Canadian Journal of Zoology 63: 97–105.
DiMauro, D. and M. I. Hunter Jr. 2002. Reproduction of amphibians in natural and anthropogenic temporary pools in managed forests. Forest Science 48: 397–406.
Dodson, S. I., R. A. Lillie, and S. Will-Wolf. 2005. Land use, water chemistry, aquatic vegetation, and Zooplankton community structure of shallow lakes. Ecological Applications 15: 1191–98.
Dorigo, U., A. Bérard, and J. F. Humbert. 2002. Comparison of eukaryotic phytobenthic community composition in a polluted river by partial 18S rRNA gene cloning and sequencing. Microbial Ecology 44: 372–80.
Ehrenfeld, J. G. and J. P. Schneider. 1991. Chamaecyparis thyoides wetlands and suburbanization: effects on hydrology, water quality and plant community composition. Journal of Applied Ecology 28: 467–90.
Enright, P. and C. A. Madramootoo. 1994. Hydrologic response of surface and subsurface drained agricultural fields. Canadian Agricultural Engineering 36: 15–24.
Estèbe, A., H. Boudries, J. M. Mouchel, and D. R. Thévenot. 1997. Urban runoff impacts on particulate metal and hydrocarbon concentrations in River Seine: suspended solid and sediment transport. Water Science and Technology 36: 185–93.
Foos, A. 2003. Spatial distribution of road salt contamination of natural springs and seeps, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, USA. Environmental Geology 44: 14–19.
Freda, J. and W. A. Dunson. 1985. The influence of external cation concentration on the hatching of amphibian embryos in water of low pH. Canadian Journal of Zoology 63: 2649–56.
Freda, J. and W. A. Dunson. 1986. Effects of low pH and other chemical variables on the local distribution of amphibians. Copeia 2: 454–66.
Hancock, M. A. and B. V. Timms. 2002. Ecology of four turbid clay pans during a filling-drying cycle in the Paroo, semi-arid Australia. Hydrobiologia 479: 95–107.
Jackson, R. B. and E. G. Jobbágy. 2005. From icy roads to salty streams. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 102: 14487–88.
Kolb, A. and W. Püttmann. 2006. Comparison of MTBE concentrations in groundwater of urban and nonurban areas in Germany. Water Research 40: 3551–58.
Kraft, G. J. and W. Stites. 2003. Nitrate impacts on groundwater from irrigated-vegetable systems in a humid north-central US sand plain. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 100: 63–74.
Kutner, M. H., C. J. Nachtsheim, J. Neter, and W. Li. 2005. Applied Linear Statistical Models. The McGraw-Hill Companies, New York, NY, USA.
Lenat, D. R. and J. K. Crawford. 1994. Effects of land-use on water quality and aquatic biota of 3 North Carolina Piedmont streams. Hydrobiologia 294: 185–99.
Leung, C. M. and J. J. Jiao. 2006. Heavy metal and trace element distributions in groundwater in natural slopes and highly urbanized spaces in Mid-Levels area, Hong Kong. Water Research 40: 753–67.
Matisoff, G. and J. P. Eaker. 1992. Summary of sediment chemistry research at Old Woman Creek, Ohio. Journal of Great Lakes Research 18: 603–21.
Maznah, W. O. W. and M. Mansor. 2002. Aquatic pollution assessment based on attached diatom communities in the Pinang River Basin, Malaysia. Hydrobiologia 487: 229–41.
Morvan, X., C. Mouvet, N. Baran, and A. Gutierrez. 2006. Pesticides in the groundwater of a spring draining a sandy aquifer: temporal variability of concentrations and fluxes. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology 87: 176–90.
Muñoz-Carpena, R., A. Ritter, and Y. C. Li. 2005. Dynamic factor analysis of groundwater quality trends in an agricultural area adjacent to Everglades National Park. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology 80: 49–70.
National Cooperative Soil Survey. 1980. Soil survey of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, USA. Soil Conservation Service, Washington, DC, USA. Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Columbus, Ohio, USA. Division of Lands and Soils, Columbus, Ohio, USA. Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Climatic Data Center. 2006. Local Climatological Data. http:// www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/index.jsp.
Novotny, V., D. Muehring, D. H. Zitomer, D. W. Smith, and R. Facey. 1998. Cyanide and metal pollution by urban snowmelt: impact of deicing compounds. Water Science and Technology 38: 223–30.
Novotny, V. and H. Olem. 1994. Water Quality. Prevention, Identification, and Management of Diffuse Pollution. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, NY, USA.
Pascoal, C., L. Marvanova, and F. Cassio. 2005. Aquatic hyphomycete diversity in streams of Northwest Portugal. Fungal Diversity 19: 109–28.
Petaloti, C., D. Voutsa, C. Samara, M. Sofoniou, L. Stratis, and T. Kouimtzis. 2004. Nutrient dynamics in shallow lakes of northern Greece. Environmental Science and Pollution Research 11: 11–17.
Podrabsky, J. E., T. Hrbek, and S. C. Hand. 1998. Physical and chemical characteristics of ephemeral pond habitats in the Maracaibo basin and Llanos region of Venezuela. Hydrobiologia 362: 67–77.
Sadinski, W. J. and W. A. Dunson. 1992. A multilevel study of effects of low pH on amphibians of temporary ponds. Journal of Herpetology 26: 413–22.
Seale, D. B. 1982. Physical factors influencing oviposition by the woodfrog, Rana sylvatica, in Pennsylvania. Copeia 3: 627–35.
Serrano, L. and K. Fahd. 2005. Zooplankton communities across a hydroperiod gradient of temporary ponds in the Doñana National Park (SW Spain). Wetlands 25: 101–11.
Shieh, S. H., J. V. Ward, and B. C. Kondratieff. 2003. Longitudinal changes in macroinvertebrate production in a stream affected by urban and agricultural activities. Archiv Fur Hydrobiologie 157: 483–503.
Stepenuck, K. F., R. L. Crunkilton, and L. Wang. 2002. Impacts of urban landuse on macroinvertebrate communities in southeastern Wisconsin streams. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 38: 1041–51.
Williams, D. D. 1987. The Ecology of Temporary Waters. Timber Press, Portland, OR, USA.
Xu, M., H. Cao, X. Ping, D. Deng, W. Feng, and J. Xu. 2005. Use of PFU protozoan community structural and functional characteristics in assessment of water quality in a large, highly polluted freshwater lake in China. Journal of Environmental Monitoring 7: 670–74.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Carrino-Kyker, S.R., Swanson, A.K. Seasonal physicochemical characteristics of thirty northern Ohio temporary pools along gradients of GIS-delineated human land-use. Wetlands 27, 749–760 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1672/0277-5212(2007)27[749:SPCOTN]2.0.CO;2
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1672/0277-5212(2007)27[749:SPCOTN]2.0.CO;2