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Region 4 Southeastern Wadeable Streams Project Information
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The Southeastern Wadeable Streams project is expanding upon what EPA Region 4 has accomplished to date by applying EMAP sampling strategy and analysis to a Region-wide study of wadeable streams. The goal of the project is to determine, at +10% precision with 90% accuracy, the percent of Regional stream miles that are subnominal in terms of habitat, ecological integrity, and trophic state. The fourth and final year of field work is underway. By the end of the project over 200 random and 30 reference stations will have been sampled. Improvements have been made in data collection efforts over the first three years of the project. Development of a master database for the project is on-going. EPA has already responded to several requests from states and corporate land owners for data from specific stations, and nutrient data from the project have been entered into the national nutrient criteria database. Conspicuous interim results have been obtained for TKN, TP, RBP habitat score, conductivity,and mercury. The cdf curve for TKN suggested that standards could be set based on R-EMAP data. A similar result was obtained for TP. Sub-optimal to marginal habitat occured in 65 + 20 % of the Region's wadeable stream miles. Conductivity values showed a pattern that corresponds to major ecoregions. The median concentration of whole-body total mercury in forage fish was 0.080 mg/kg (wet weight), with 58 + 25 % of Regional stream miles having a concentration > 0.100 mg/kg. Compared to other ecoregions, higher mercury values occurred in the Southeastern Plains, which features warm, slowly flowing streams where anaerobic sediments are conducive to methylation. Multi-scale pilot studies are underway to explore the feasibility of using aerial photointerpretation or classified satellite imagery to relate watershed, riparian, and channel conditions to in-stream metrics.