Classification Of Illinois Lakes And Reservoirs And Evaluation Of The Potential Use Of Phytoplankton As Biocriteria

Abstract

In recent decades, the public has become increasingly aware of degradation among the nation's bodies of water. With this rise in awareness, the Clean Water Act was established during the 1970's to define criteria that would protect the nation's waters from further degradation. In order to fulfill the criteria set by the Clean Water Act, many states adopted bioassessment protocols into stream monitoring programs. However, few bioassessment protocols currently exist for lakes of anthropogenic origin. Thus, using data provided by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, this study examined the classification of Illinois lakes and reservoirs, and evaluated the use of phytoplankton as biocriteria. Data were obtained from the Ambient Lakes Monitoring Program, and examined and formatted to produce a validated data set. Environmental and phytoplankton density data were standardized and analyzed with PRIMER 6 software, using Analyses of Similarity and BV-step routines to test for statistical differences between months, regions, lake origins, and informative taxa. Results revealed that lakes undergo seasonal changes both environmentally, and among their biotic communities. Lakes were also shown to undergo changes during seasons as well, indicated by differences between the months June and August. Additionally, results also revealed that Illinois shows regionalization and that variability between regions is strongest among the northern, central, and southern regions. Results also reveal that there are no statistical differences between lakes of natural origin and lakes of anthropogenic origin, and also, that informative algal taxa exist for the northern, central, and southern regions. The northern region was shown to have twenty-four informative genera, while the central had twenty, and the southern region had eleven. In total, twenty-eight genera were considered informative for the state. Some of the informative genera showed strong correlations with the environmental variables used in the study, however, many of them revealed no strong correlations. While these results do not yield a bioassessment protocol that can be used to evaluate the health of Illinois lakes, they do indicate that a protocol using phytoplankton as biocriteria may be possible to create and use in Illinois.

Date of Award	2007
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	Eastern Illinois University
Supervisor	Charles L Pederson (Supervisor)