Aquatic Resources of Wilson's Creek National Battlefield--Natural Resource Condition Assessment

Aquatic Resources of Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield--Natural Resource Condition Assessment

Tyler Cribbs, Kevin James (Kevin_James@nps.gov), Hope R. Dodd (Hope_Dodd@nps.gov), David E. Bowles (David_Bowles@nps.gov)

Water quality degradation has been a problem at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield since the battlefield was established.  Three streams are located in the battlefield: Wilson’s Creek and two of its tributaries, Terrell Creek and Skegg’s branch.  A wastewater treatment plant is located 5 km upstream of the park and releases treated effluent directly into Wilson’s Creek. Non-point source pollution (urban runoff, agriculture) has also deteriorated Wilson’s Creek water quality through the years.  All of these factors have resulted in Wilson’s Creek being listed as a 303(d) stream for unspecified contaminants.   A Natural Resource Condition Assessment (NRCA) was recently completed to evaluate current conditions of  resources in the battlefield.  NRCAs can provide current condition estimates, help establish reference conditions or baseline values, and identify potential threats to a resource.   

The NRCA uses multiple metrics to evaluate the current aquatic resource condition, which includes water quality (DO, pH, specific conductance, temp), flow regime, fish, and macroinvertebrate community metrics.  Five metrics were used to assess the current condition of the fish community including a fish Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI), Simpson’s diversity index, and the composition of sucker, sunfish, and benthic species.  Also, seven metrics were used to assess the current condition of the macroinvertebrate community.  These included Family Richness, Taxa (genus) Richness, EPT Richness, EPT Ratio, Shannon index (Genus), Shannon Evenness index, and the Hilsenhoff Biotic Index.   A logic-based integrated analysis was used to evaluate all metrics, biotic and abiotic, to determine if the current condition of aquatic resources resembles the reference condition described by the NRCA and to what degree that statement is supported.  Using the set of management targets created from the NRCA indicate that the aquatic resources (especially Wilson’s Creek) are in relatively good shape.  These metrics alone maybe misleading so community composition will also be discussed.