Published Graduate Research: Flow Alteration

October 2020

Flow alteration by any means, whether through dams, urbanization, or agriculture, can cause detrimental impacts to riverine ecosystems. Statistically significant relationships between flow alteration and native fish richness are important for managing river systems.

For this research, I combined a national scale dataset on native fish richness and flow alteration for all rivers in the contiguous U.S. Using ecological modeling and statistical regression in RStudio, we calculated relationships that  help establish significant flow metrics (characteristics of the natural flow regime) that are important for native fish species. These relationships also establish thresholds of flow alteration, or a level of flow alteration at which adverse resource impacts begin to occur. 

George, R., McManamay, R., Perry, D., Sabo, J., & Ruddell, B. L. Indicators of hydro-ecological alteration for the rivers of the United States. Ecological Indicators, 120, 106908.