Mass animal die-offs may be increasing, new research shows

Large numbers of dead sunfish and largemouth bass in April 2014 following a severe winter on Wintergreen Lake, Kalamazoo County, Michigan. (Photo courtesy of G. Mittelbach)

Mass die-offs of animals may be increasing in frequency and — for birds, fishes, and marine invertebrates — in severity as well, according to a study of 727 mass mortality events since 1940.

Despite the ecological importance of individual mass mortality events, in which a larger than normal number of individuals die within a population, little research has been conducted on patterns across mass mortality events. The new study will help researchers better assess trends in mass mortality events and their causes, according to the authors of the paper in the Jan. 12 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The initial patterns are surprising, in terms of the documented changes to frequencies of occurrences, magnitudes of each event, and the causes of mass mortality,” said Samuel Fey, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale and co-lead author of the paper. “These data also show that we have a lot of room to improve how we document and study these types of rare events.”

Fey, along with fellow researchers at the University of San Diego and University of California-Berkeley, report that the magnitude of the die-offs has increased in birds, fishes, and marine invertebrates, held steady among mammals, and decreased in frogs and amphibians. The authors recognized that more scientific research has been done on mass mortality events in the last few decades but said even accounting for this “discovery bias” does not explain all of the increase in such events. The increase in mass mortality events appears to be associated with a rise in disease emergence, biotoxicity, and multiple interacting stressors, they note.

Overall, disease was the primary culprit, accounting for 26% of the mass die-offs. The impacts of direct human activity, primarily from environmental contamination, caused 19% of such events. Another major cause was biotoxicity triggered by events such as algae blooms, rapid increases of algae in water systems. Processes directly influenced by climate — such as weather extremes, thermal stress, oxygen stress, or starvation — also contributed accounted collectively for about 25% of mass mortality events.

The most severe events were those with multiple causes, the paper shows.

“This study should improve our understanding of the continuum of mortality patterns and processes that exist between background mortality levels and species-level extinctions,” Fey said.

Adam M. Siepielski of the University of San Diego was co-lead author of the paper. Stephanie M. Carlson of the University of California-Berkeley was senior author. Fey began working on this research while a graduate student at Dartmouth College.

Source: Yale University

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Study of mountain lion energetics shows the power of the pounce

The SMART wildlife collar is equipped with GPS, accelerometers, and a magnetometer to provide detailed data on where the animal is and what it is doing.

Scientists at UC Santa Cruz, using a new wildlife tracking collar they developed, were able to continuously monitor the movements of mountain lions in the wild and determine how much energy the big cats use to stalk, pounce, and overpower their prey.

The research team's findings, published October 3 in Science, help explain why most cats use a "stalk and pounce" hunting strategy. The new "SMART" wildlife collar--equipped with GPS, accelerometers, and other high-tech features--tells researchers not just where an animal is but what it is doing and how much its activities "cost" in terms of energy expenditure.

"What's really exciting is that we can now say, here's the cost of being a mountain lion in the wild and what they need in terms of calories to live in this environment," said first author Terrie Williams, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. "Understanding the energetics of wild animals moving in complex environments is valuable information for developing better wildlife management plans."

The researchers were able to quantify, for example, the high energetic costs of traveling over rugged terrain compared to the low cost of "cryptic" hunting behaviors such as sit-and-wait or stalk-and-ambush movements. During the actual pounce and kill, the cats invest a lot of energy in a short time to overpower their prey. Data from the collars showed that mountain lions adjust the amount of energy they put into the initial pounce to account for the size of their prey.

"They know how big a pounce they need to bring down prey that are much bigger than themselves, like a full-grown buck, and they'll use a much smaller pounce for a fawn," Williams said.

Cats on treadmills

Before Williams and her team could interpret the data from collars deployed on wild mountain lions, however, they first had to perform calibration studies with mountain lions in captivity. This meant, among other things, training mountain lions to walk and run on a treadmill and measuring their oxygen consumption at different activity levels. Those studies took a bit longer than planned.

"People just didn't believe you could get a mountain lion on a treadmill, and it took me three years to find a facility that was willing to try," Williams said.

Finally, she met Lisa Wolfe, a veterinarian with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, who had three captive mountain lions (siblings whose mother had been killed by a hunter) at a research facility near Fort Collins, Colorado. After eight months of training by Wolfe, the mountain lions were comfortable on the treadmill and Williams started collecting data.

Power animals

According to Williams, the treadmill data showed that mountain lions do not have the aerobic capacity for sustained, high-energy activity. "They are power animals. They have a slow routine walking speed and use a burst of speed and the force of the pounce to knock down or overpower their prey," she said.

In addition to the treadmill studies, the captive cats were videotaped wearing the collars while doing a wide range of activities in a large outdoor enclosure. This provided a library of collar acceleration signatures specific for different behaviors, from resting and grooming to running and pouncing. "We got all the different behaviors videotaped and analyzed with the corresponding accelerometer traces," Williams said.

Meanwhile, coauthor Chris Wilmers led a team that deployed the collars on wild cats in the Santa Cruz mountains. Wilmers, an associate professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz, leads the Santa Cruz Puma Project, which has been tracking mountain lions in the area to study the effects of habitat fragmentation and developing new technology for understanding the animals' behavior and energetics.

"Because mountain lions are a cryptic animal, we can't really observe them hunting and killing prey. With the SMART collars, we can see how they go about doing that, what their strategies are, and how many calories they are expending to do it," Wilmers said. "The ability to estimate the field energetics of animals in the wild opens up a whole new suite of questions we can ask about the ecology of these animals, which ultimately informs not only our basic understanding of them but also their conservation and management."

State-of-the-art collars

Coauthor Gabriel Elkaim, professor of computer engineering at UCSC's Baskin School of Engineering, worked on signal processing of the accelerometer data and is continuing to develop the state-of-the-art tracking collars. The prototype used in this study, called the Species Movement, Acceleration, and Radio Tracking (SMART) wildlife collar, was developed by computer engineering graduate student Matthew Rutishauser. The collars include a GPS unit, accelerometers, and a magnetometer to provide detailed data on where an animal is and what it is doing. "We hope this will be an enabling technology to allow a much greater depth of understanding of animals in the wild," Elkaim said.

The researchers now want to look at mountain lion energetics in a range of different habitat types. In particular, Wilmers said, he is interested in how human land use and habitat fragmentation may be influencing the energetic demands on mountain lions in the wild. Williams and her students also have projects using the new collar technology to study other large carnivores, including wolves, polar bears, and Weddell seals.

"A lot of these large carnivore species are threatened or endangered, and understanding their physiological limitations has been a big missing piece in conservation planning," Williams said. "This technology gives us a whole new level understanding of what these animals are doing and what it costs them to live in the wild, and that can really help move the science of conservation forward."

In addition to Williams, Wilmers, Wolfe, and Elkaim, the coauthors of the paper include Tracy Davis at Colorado Parks and Wildlife; program manager Traci Kendall and head trainer Beau Richter in Williams's lab at UC Santa Cruz; and UCSC graduate students Yiwei Wang and Caleb Bryce. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Source: University of California - Santa Cruz

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Tailor-made for the aquaculture sector

Details are important. The hood is specially adapted for personnel wearing helmets – without compromising vision. Credit: SINTEF Health Research

Fish husbandry workers have played an active part in developing work clothing tailor-made for their wet, windy and messy working conditions.

They're standing in a small circle around a net pen out in the ocean. Their job is to maintain the net pens, de-louse the salmon, and carry out the many other tasks essential to the running of a fish farm facility. The wind is bitter and the rain is lashing in from all directions. Sea water is splashing around their feet. Everything they handle is wet. Cold water creeps relentlessly up to their knees and along to their elbows inside their coveralls, which are only waterproof up until the second wash.

This is a normal working day for a couple of thousand workers in fish farms all along the Norwegian coast. In spite of this no work clothing exists that is specifically adapted to their very special working conditions. Yet.

Industrial designers Tore Christian Bjørsvik Storholmen and Ole Petter Næsgaard at SINTEF Health Research have developed work clothing which they hope will make conditions both safer and more comfortable for husbandry workers out on the fish farms. Their project has been carried out in close collaboration with the workers who will be wearing the clothing.

Better together

"We've spent a lot of time getting to know the business and the needs of the husbandry workers," says Næsgaard. "We've taken part in many tasks, observed what goes on, and have obtained input and feedback in response to our suggestions," he says. "We've met with a thoroughly honest group of people. They don't hold back when they're not satisfied," he says.

They visited three different facilities close to Hitra and Frøya as part of a pilot project. Ideas and sketches made during one visit were taken to the next so that they could encourage reactions and get feedback. It has been an iterative process involving an ongoing series of corrections and improvements.

"This has served as a quality control on our work to develop relevant and attractive solutions," says Storholmen. "We could never have put the first prototype on the market," he says. "But our dialogue with the users has enabled continuous refinement. New details are always being developed and incorporated. "We're now getting close to a product that can be introduced to the market," he says.

Inspired by climbers and skiers

"When we were studying the husbandry workers, we saw that they do a lot of climbing from boat to boat through ropes and cables and across a variety of different barriers. This led us to obtain inspiration from clothes developed for climbers. The result is that the clothing now offers a very good fit - combined with excellent freedom of movement," explains Storholmen.

When it comes to choosing fabrics, the researchers have obtained greater inspiration from sports clothes than from other types of work clothing. Instead of thick, insulated suits, the new clothing concept has much more in common with kit worn by skiers.

"We've exploited the shell principle," says Storholmen. "The fabric of the outermost layer is water- and wind-proof and very light and durable," he says. "We've also developed intermediate layers and underwear, so users can select the clothing they need based on weather conditions and their own level of activity," he explains.

The clothing is also specifically adapted to allow good freedom of movement in the neck area - even when wearing a life vest. The same applies to the hood which has plenty of room for the mandatory helmet. What about reflective patches? These are placed strategically on the arms, hood and shoulders, and not across the shoulders and legs which is standard for the majority of existing work clothing.

"Actually, we saw that workers testing the clothing were at first sorry to have to return it following the tests," says Storholmen. "This has to be a good sign," he says.

However, the developers are not satisfied simply with anatomical adjustments, new fabrics and good visibility. There has to be a place for modern technology in this type of clothing. So the suit is equipped with a waterproof pocket for a mobile phone, and will also be fitted with a separate pocket to accommodate a man-overboard alarm.

Comfort equals effective HSE

The fish farms visited by the researchers are in exposed coastal locations, often about a half-hour's boat trip from land. The husbandry workers are housed in floating pontoons, surrounded by net pens. They may have to stay here for as much as a week at a time. There have been situations where workers have fallen into the sea. It is essential that the new work clothing represents an improvement in safety. It must be easy for the wearer to get hold of important tools such as knives, tape and communications equipment.

"An Operations Manager told us that good work clothing is one of the most important aids to effective HSE," says Storholmen. "People standing around getting cold lose concentration on what they're doing, making accidents more likely. We believe that this is thoroughly addressed by the new clothing," he says.

A net pen is an enormous "warehouse," and if a major accident occurs, the consequences for the environment and the company's profitability may be very large.

"Aquaculture uniform"

The clothing currently worn by husbandry workers is essentially the same as the standard primarily developed for the building and construction industry, where competitive pricing is a major issue. The clothing being developed in this project will probably be more expensive.

"Current work clothing is a consumer item," say the researchers. "Our impression is that there is a willingness to pay for a better and more durable product specifically adapted to the needs of the aquaculture industry - a specially designed "aquaculture uniform" which can identify the workers and promote an increase in the pride they have in their profession," they say.

Source: SINTEF

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Climate change projected to drive species northward

Coho salmon are among the species anticipated to shift northward with climate change. Credit: NOAA Fisheries

Anticipated changes in climate will push West Coast marine species from sharks to salmon northward an average of 30 kilometers per decade, shaking up fish communities and shifting fishing grounds, according to a new study published in Progress in Oceanography.

The study suggests that shifting species will likely move into the habitats of other marine life to the north, especially in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea. Some will simultaneously disappear from areas at the southern end of their ranges, especially off Oregon and California.

"As the climate warms, the species will follow the conditions they're adapted to," said Richard Brodeur, a NOAA Fisheries senior scientist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center's Newport Research Station and coauthor of the study. "We're going to see more interactions between species and there will be winners and losers that we cannot foresee."

The study, led by William Cheung of the University of British Columbia, estimated changes in the distribution of 28 near-surface fish species commonly collected by research surveys in the northeast Pacific Ocean. The researchers used established global climate models to project how the distribution of the fish would shift by 2050 as greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere and, in turn, the ocean surface.

Brodeur cautioned that like any models, climate models carry uncertainty. While they provide a glimpse of the most likely changes in global climate, they may be less accurate when estimating more fine-scale, local changes.

"Nothing is certain," he said, "but we think we have a picture of the most likely changes."
Some species shifts are already being documented as West Coast waters are warming: predatory Humboldt squid from Central and South America have invaded the West Coast of North America in recent years, albacore have shifted to more northerly waters and eulachon have disappeared from warming waters at the southern end of their range.

"Thinking more broadly, this re-shuffling of marine species across the whole biological community may lead to declines in the beneficial functions of marine and coastal ecosystems," said Tom Okey, a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation at the University of Victoria and a coauthor of the study. "These declines may occur much more rapidly and in more surprising ways than our expected changes in species alone."

The study anticipates warm-water species such as thresher sharks and chub mackerel becoming more prominent in the Gulf of Alaska and off British Columbia. Some predators such as sea lions and seabirds, which rear their young in fixed rookeries or colonies, may find the fish they usually prey on moving beyond predators' usual foraging ranges.

"If their prey moves farther north, they either have to travel farther and expend more energy to get to them, or find something else to eat," Brodeur said. "It's the same thing for fishermen. If it gets warmer, the fish they depend on are going to move up north and that means more travel time and more fuel will be needed to follow them, or else they may need to switch to different target species. It may not happen right away but we are likely to see that kind of a trend."

El Nino years, when tropical influences temporarily warm the eastern Pacific, offer a preview of what to expect as the climate warms.

Shifts in marine communities may be most pronounced in high-latitude regions such as the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea, which the study identifies as "hotspots" of change. Cold-water species such as salmon and capelin have narrower temperature preferences than warmer water species, making them more sensitive to ocean warming and likely to respond more quickly.

An intrusion of warm-water species into cooler areas could lead to significant changes in marine communities and ecosystems. The diversity of northern fish communities, now often dominated by a few very prolific species such as walleye pollock, may increase as southern species enter the region, leading to new food web and species interactions.

Source: NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region

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You can hear the coral reefs dying, experts say

A lionfish in an Indonesian reef. Credit: Image courtesy of University of Essex

You can hear the sound of former bustling coral reefs dying due to the impact of human activity, according to new research from the Universities of Essex and Exeter.

Coral reefs are amongst the noisiest environments on our planet and healthy reefs can be heard using underwater microphones from kilometres away.

However, scientists have found that coral reefs impacted by human activity, such as overfishing, are much quieter than protected reefs, which can have a big impact on the fish and invertebrates which rely on the reefs for survival.

Led by Dr Julius Piercy, from the University of Essex, the study, which also involved the University of Derby, involved taking acoustic recordings of coral reefs with different levels of protection around islands in the Philippines. The research found that the noise produced by the few remaining resident fish and crustaceans on unprotected reefs was only one third of the sound produced at bustling, healthy reef communities

This is particularly important to the larval stages of reef fish and invertebrates, which spend the first few days of their life away from reefs and use sound as an orientation cue to find their way back. With less sound being produced at impacted reefs, the distance over which larvae can detect habitat is ten times less, impacting on the replenishment of future generations needed to build up and maintain healthy population levels.

"In an environment where underwater noise plays such an important role in the population dynamics of coral reefs, it is alarming to find such a large effect of human impact on the natural acoustic environment," explained Dr Piercy. "This puts reef sound in the spotlight for the people who manage coral reef ecosystems on two counts. Firstly, that they might need to consider reef sound as an integral part of the design of marine protected area networks to ensure that there is sufficient recruitment of larvae within and between reserves and neighbouring reefs. Secondly, this study shows sound can be useful in monitoring the health of coral reefs."

With growing evidence demonstrating the direct impacts of human-made noise on aquatic life, these findings highlight additional indirect human impacts -- such as overfishing and landscape development -- on natural underwater sounds.

Dr Steve Simpson, from Biosciences at the University of Exeter, added: "Taking sound recordings is a cheap, fast and objective way to get a broad idea of whether a reef is in a good condition or not. While it cannot replace detailed visual surveys conducted by snorkelers or divers, it gives a good account of the cryptic and nocturnal species missed in visual census, and quickly provides a general picture of the state of coral reefs without requiring time-consuming surveys and extensive training."

The researchers also found that reef sounds can be detected further away than predicted, increasing previous estimates of the likely detection zone for recruiting larvae and increasing the potential importance of reef sound in attracting new fish and crustaceans to coral reefs.

The study highlights the need to further characterise reef soundscapes and identify acoustic cues that larvae tune into when seeking a suitable home. Dr Simpson said: "We still know very little about what sounds these animals are listening to and it is likely to be very different between species. Combined with recent findings that fish dislike the smell of impacted reefs (another homing cue used by the larvae), there is a real need to understand how human impacts can indirectly affect the success of future generations of reef organisms."

Source: University of Essex

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Combatting illegal fishing in offshore marine reserves

Fishing boat. Credit: Henry Wolcott

Conservation scientists say there needs to be a new approach to protecting offshore marine reserves.

Illegal fishing in marine reserves will be a major focus at the IUCN World Parks Congress, which has opened in Sydney.

Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at James Cook University, who are attending the conference, have found a way to predict illegal fishing activities to help authorities better protect marine reserves.

Marine reserves are the most common strategy used to protect and maintain marine ecosystems around the world.

The International Convention of Biological Diversity aims to have 10 per cent of the world's marine areas protected by 2020.

Many countries are contributing to this target by protecting remote, offshore areas. For example, the United States recently created the world's largest fully protected marine reserve, covering almost 1.27 million square kilometres in the central Pacific Ocean.

But scientists are concerned that while a great deal of effort is being made to create reserves, many countries are simply not able to enforce the laws that are supposed to protect them.

fishing gear. Image: Todd Steiner, Sea Turtle Restoration Project
The majority of fishers obey the law, but some don't.

"The success of protected areas depends on whether people comply with the regulations," says Professor Joshua Cinner from Coral CoE.

"Enforcement and compliance issues for large off-shore marine parks are fundamentally different to near-shore protected areas," Professor Cinner says.

He explains that the biggest problems facing countries trying to enforce offshore marine reserves is their distance from land and the difficulty and cost of patrolling large tracts of ocean.
"The distances to these areas can be very large. They are a long way from prying eyes and quite often the regulations are such that you have to actually catch people illegally fishing to prosecute them," Professor Cinner says.

"It can be extremely difficult for authorities to catch illegal fishers in the act."

In a bid to combat the problem, researchers at Coral CoE examined five years' worth of data collected from the World Heritage-listed Cocos Island National Park, a unique marine protected area in the Pacific Ocean about 500 kilometres off the west coast of Costa Rica.
From the records they were able identify illegal fishing patterns and predict both when and where illegal fishing was likely to happen.

They found that illegal fishing was concentrated in a few 'hotspots' and really ramped up during specific lunar phases of some months.

Professor Bob Pressey, also from Coral CoE, says authorities could use this knowledge to match patrols to the time and place when illegal fishers are most likely to be in action.
"Using a targeted approach helps authorities catch and deter illegal fishers, while saving money on patrols," Professor Pressey says.

"Rather than just hoping you can catch illegal fishers effectively by random patrols, we have used previous patrols to look for patterns which tell us when and where people fish illegally," adds Professor Cinner.

Study lead author, Coral CoE PhD candidate, Adrian Arias says the model of predicting illegal patterns from old records can be used to increase the success of patrols in other locations.

"Our research in Costa Rica showed how a systematic and periodic analysis of patrol records can help to increase the probability of catching illegal fishers. This could be done pretty much anywhere that patrol data are available," he says.

Professor Cinner adds that by better targeting limited resources, authorities have a greater chance of successfully protecting marine parks.

"Targeting resources is particularly important for developing countries such as Costa Rica, which have taken on the conservation challenge but don't have the same funding to ensure compliance as a country such as Australia."

Source: ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies

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Recreational activity a major pollutant on Canadian coast of Pacific Ocean

This is University of Calgary associate professor in geography Stefania Bertazzon.
Credit: Robert Walker

From recreational boats and fishing vessels to commercial cruise ships and private marinas, a newly published study shows that oil discharges related to human maritime activity on the Canadian coast is posing a major threat to marine ecosystems in the Pacific Ocean.

The study -- published in the August edition of the journal Applied Geography, with University of Calgary associate professor in geography Stefania Bertazzon as lead author -- provides a geospatial analysis of oil discharges in the Canadian Pacific Ocean.

The findings show that a large portion of oil discharge within these waters stems from recreational activities, passenger traffic and fisheries. According to this scientific analysis -- conducted on oil spills observed by the National Aerial Surveillance Program with the use of remote sensing devices -- these sources are polluting the ocean along the British Columbia coast more than oil tankers and commercial cargo ships.

"Cargo ships and oil tankers are much more regulated with portside inspections and they have to meet certain standards," explains Bertazzon. "They're very aware of this surveillance and this is probably why our analysis suggests that they are responsible for a smaller portion of detected oil discharges. They have to be more careful."

Bertazzon adds: "We're not saying that cargo ships and oil tankers are not polluting. What we are saying is that they are not the only source of pollution in the Canadian Pacific Ocean."
Bertazzon and her co-authors explain that fuel docks for recreational and fishing vessels can be problematic. "We know that there's a lot of oil discharge in these fuel docks, which is largely uncontrolled," she says.

"One thing that happens in these marinas is there's a lot of old boats which have been sitting there for years slowly leaking into the ocean. These are not huge spills. It's a relatively small discharge. But there's a lot of these derelict vessels and together they make for a large source of pollution."

While there's no denying the impact of large-scale oil industry disasters such as the Gulf of Mexico spill in 2010, Bertazzon argues that the oil discharges related to maritime activities are even more devastating to marine ecosystems in the long run.
"There is scientific evidence to show that these day to day activities have a larger impact on the wild life and the marine ecosystem than those accidents that are huge, but limited in space and time," says Bertazzon. "What we're talking about happens every day, all along the coast. The impact is longer term and over a larger spatial extent."

Source:  University of Calgary

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Mining can damage fish habitats far downstream, study shows

In this image, acid is seeping from a Kentucky coal mine. 
Credit: Wesley Daniel, Michigan State University

Anglers across the nation wondering why luck at their favorite fishing spot seems to have dried up may have a surprising culprit: a mine miles away, even in a different state.

Scientists at Michigan State University (MSU) have taken a first broad look at the impacts of mines across the country- and found that mining can damage fish habitats miles downstream, and even in streams not directly connected to the mines.

The work is published in this week's issue of the journal Ecological Indicators.
"We've been surprised that even a single mine in headwaters might influence larger rivers miles downstream," said Wesley Daniel, a research associate at Michigan State University. "Mines have a much stronger influence on fishes than has been assumed. It's important, when considering the location of a new mine, to not just look local -- but look way downstream."

Mining occurs in every state for a variety of natural resources -- such as coal, precious metals, pebbles, sand and salt. Mining disrupts the environment around it, Daniel said. It can add sediments and chemicals to rivers, alter the flow of streams, lead to fewer forests in headwaters, and compact soil -- all of which can change fish habitats.

And what happens to the river or stream near the mine flows downstream and can wreak havoc on populations of trout or bass and the smaller fishes that they prefer, far from the mine's location. The study looked at areas throughout the eastern United States typically known for mining, such as Appalachia, but also included areas where little mining research has been done, such as Iowa and Illinois

Daniel works in the lab of Dana Infante, associate professor of fisheries and wildlife who studies the way landscape and land use affect water. Colleagues in her lab recently developed an algorithm capable of crunching the mountains of data that tell the connected stories of the nation's streams and rivers.

That algorithm has allowed Daniel to take a long look at how extensive the effects of mines on rivers can be. His conclusion calls mines a "regional stress" and cites the example of pollutants from a mine in a headwater stream in Kentucky disrupting the breeding grounds of bass in Tennessee rivers.
While large rivers can dilute the damage a mine may do, the small streams that feed into a watershed may be much more fragile.

"The quality of headwater streams will determine quality of rivers," Daniel said. "The condition of small streams that flow into larger rivers will affect downstream fish communities. Everything is cumulative -- again and again we can see that the effects of one mine can be associated with altered fish communities."

Along with Daniel and Infante, "Characterizing coal and mineral mines as a regional source of stress to stream fish assemblages" was written by Robert Hughes at Amnis Opes Institute; Yin-Phan Tsang, Daniel Wieferich, Kyle Herreman, Arthur Cooper and William Taylor at MSU; Peter Esselman at the U.S. Geological Survey Great Lakes Science Center in Ann Arbor, Mich.; and Lizhu Wang of the International Joint Commission Great Lakes Regional Office in Detroit.

Infante, Tsang, Esselman and Taylor are affiliated with the MSU Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, an interdisciplinary research center that works in the innovative new field of coupled human and natural systems to find sustainable solutions that both benefit the environment and enable people to thrive.

The research was funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Source: Michigan State University

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