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Communication at the NABS Annual meeting, Keystone, 2000
(5) RECIPROCAL TRANSPLANT EXPERIMENTS TO DETERMINE THE RESISTANCE AND RESILIENCE OF
BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATE COMMUNITIES IN YUKON STREAMS.
R. Taylor and R. Bailey. Department of Zoology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5B7
In the Yukon Territory, effluent discharges associated with mining for gold in 'placer' deposits results in elevated inputs of both settleable and suspended solids to receiving streams. Such disturbances are thought to alter the structure of benthic macroinvertebrate (BMI) communities. When assessing the impact of such a disturbance on BMI community structure, two questions are of importance. First, how resistant is the community structure to the disturbance? The magnitude of the immediate (short-term) response of a community is an inverse measure of its resistance. Second, are BMI communities resilient when exposed to such a disturbance, such that they recover to their former state upon removal of the disturbance? Placer mining exposure was simulated by reciprocally transplanting artificial substrates at selected confluence locations where a mined and unmined stream met. In doing so, it was possible to monitor response and recovery patterns of Yukon streams benthic macroinvertebrate communities to placer mining discharge. Our study was the first use of an experimental system with artificial substrates as a means of measuring the time-scale and magnitude of impact and recovery of benthic macroinvertebrate communities to Yukon placer mining activity.
Presented at 2:00 PM on Monday, May 29, 2000 in Bioassessment I
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