Dr. Dean DeNicola
The Environmental & Plant Biology Colloquium Series presents Dr. Dean DeNicola on “Long-term chemical and biological changes in a watershed since the initiation of passive treatment for acid mine drainage” on Friday, Oct. 30, at 11:50 a.m. in Porter 104.
DeNicola is a professor in the Department of Biology at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania.
Abstract: The Slippery Rock Creek watershed has been severely impacted by acid mine drainage (AMD) for more than a century, predominantly from coal mining in a 70 km2 area at the headwaters. Since 1995, restoration of the headwaters has focused on land reclamation and construction of 12 passive treatment system complexes. Six stream sites, 1 of which is an unimpacted reference stream, have been sampled from 1996-2007 to monitor changes in water chemistry, benthic diatoms, primary productivity, and macroinvertebrates resulting from reclamation efforts. Temporal changes in water chemistry and benthic diatom community structure indicated moderate improvement in ecological integrity at sites below treatment, while algal primary productivity and density indicated treated sites were still highly impacted. Macroinvertebrate communities responded less to improvements in water chemistry at treated sites than benthic diatoms, probably because diatoms are more species rich, and have a wider tolerance range among taxa, compared to macroinvertebrates. AMD also may indirectly affect biological communities by reducing nutrient concentrations. Using nutrient diffusing substrata, we determined that nutrient limitation of benthic algal biomass increased with AMD impact, indicating metal oxyhydroxide precipitates associated with AMD likely decreased the concentration of water column phosphorus. Incorporating different types of communities and metrics into bioassessment gave a more complete understanding on how different attributes of ecological integrity responded to restoration for AMD.
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