Examining inequality in aquatic ecosystem services: Evidence from large-scale monitoring programs.

We hypothesize that aquatic ecosystem services are likely to be inequitably accessible and addressing this hypothesis requires systematic assessment at regional and national scales. We used existing data from large-scale aquatic monitoring programs (National Coastal Condition Assessment, National Lakes Assessment) to examine relationships between ecosystem condition, approximating a subset of cultural and provisioning services, and inequality (population below poverty level, minority population). We also assessed whether monitoring sites equitably represented the gradient of socioeconomic backgrounds. Several water quality indicators were associated with significantly different minority and low-income percentages; however, the effect size was generally small, with the exception of nitrogen condition status. Minority communities were somewhat under-represented when comparing the distribution of all census blocks to those in proximity to monitoring sites. Analyses were sensitive to the skewed distribution of monitoring sites with a low frequency of observations at the more socially vulnerable part of the gradient. We discuss implications of these findings for improving the representation of vulnerable communities in large-scale monitoring programs.

Functional changes in littoral macroinvertebrate communities in response to watershed-level anthropogenic stress.

Watershed-scale anthropogenic stressors have profound effects on aquatic communities. Although several functional traits of stream macroinvertebrates change predictably in response to land development and urbanization, little is known about macroinvertebrate functional responses in lakes. We assessed functional community structure, functional diversity (Rao's quadratic entropy) and voltinism in macroinvertebrate communities sampled across the full gradient of anthropogenic stress in Laurentian Great Lakes coastal wetlands. Functional diversity and voltinism significantly decreased with increasing development, whereas agriculture had smaller or non-significant effects. Functional community structure was affected by watershed-scale development, as demonstrated by an ordination analysis followed by regression. Because functional community structure affects energy flow and ecosystem function, and functional diversity is known to have important implications for ecosystem resilience to further environmental change, these results highlight the necessity of finding ways to remediate or at least ameliorate these effects.