Lay Abstract

This is quite possibly going to be my hardest assignment in my Honors Bio Lab: write a lay abstract for a paper. I know how to write abstracts...but it's HARD to write one in non-scientific prose. If someone wants to read through this and just double-check I haven't been too science-y (a good sign would be if you hate science and can understand it!), I'd appreciate it.

Lay Abstract – The way land is used in agriculture often affects natural ecological habitats nearby. In this study, information about the past and present collections of fish in both the central Chattahoochee River system and the in-stream habitats was used to test the sensitivity of fish populations to land use. A positive relationship was found between agricultural land use and the level of deposits in the river. The more agricultural land use near the water, the more sediment was found. Greater levels of sediment were generally accompanied by less fish diversity, that is, the more sediment, the fewer number of fish species present in the water. A relationship between agriculture and mainstream species abundance was found, but a relationship between agriculture and abundance in headwater reaches was not. This suggests that agricultural land use has a greater effect on mainstream reaches – and their fish species – than on headwater reaches and the fish communities native to them. These results are important in the field of fish conservation.

Science Abstract - Historical and contemporary fish collections were used to examine the influence of agricultural land use on fish communities in the central Chattahoochee River, USA. In-stream habitat data were also collected to examine the relationship between agricultural land use and stream habitat structure. We found a significant positive relationship between agricultural land use and in-stream sediment (r2=0.43, P=O.Ol). Stream depth heterogeneity decreased significantly with increased sediment (9=0.39, P=0.02). Mainstream reaches draining agricultural lands
had significantly lower levels of fish diversity than forested reaches (r2=0.47, P<0.01). Agriculture also explained significant variation in mainstream species abundances but was not a significant predictor of species diversity or species abundances in headwater reaches. Most pool species that use coarse substrates decreased in relative abundance with increasing agriculture in the watershed. Our results suggest that mainstream environments and their associated communities are more susceptible than headwater reaches to the effects of agriculture. This finding has important consequences for conservation, since mainstream reaches are reported to function as species refugia during pulse disturbance events (e.g., floods, droughts).

Walser CA, Bart HL Jr. Influence of agriculture on in-stream habitat and fish community structure in Piedmont watersheds of the Chattahoochee River System.
Ecology of Freshwater Fish 1999: 8: 237-246. ©Munksgaard, 1999.