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The Fate of Atmospherically Deposited Mercury in Mountain Lake Food Webs, and Implications for Fisheries Management

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The Fate of Atmospherically Deposited Mercury in Mountain Lake Food Webs, and Implications for Fisheries Management Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses Summer 8-6-2019 The Fate of Atmospherically Deposited Mercury in Mountain Lake Food Webs, and Implications for Fisheries Management Ariana Martos Chiapella Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds Part of the Environmental Sciences Commons, and the Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Chiapella, Ariana Martos, "The Fate of Atmospherically Deposited Mercury in Mountain Lake Food Webs, and Implications for Fisheries Management" (2019). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 5091. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.6967 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. The Fate of Atmospherically Deposited Mercury in Mountain Lake Food Webs, and Implications for Fisheries Management by Ariana Martos Chiapella A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Earth, Environment and Society Dissertation Committee: Angela L. Strecker, Chair Jennifer Allen Collin Eagles-Smith Elise Granek Max Nielsen-Pincus Yangdong Pan Portland State University 2019 Abstract Mountain lakes are an iconic feature of the landscape in the Mountain West. They hold significant ecological and cultural value, and are important sentinels of environmental change. Despite their pristine image, these remote waterbodies are subjected to numerous anthropogenic stressors. Mountain lakes are naturally fishless systems, but historical fish stocking has led to major changes in mountain lake food web structure, including declines of resident amphibians, large-bodied zooplankton, and emergent insect populations. Atmospherically deposited contaminants, such as mercury, can accumulate in mountain lake food webs, leading to relatively high levels in the fish relative to the water. Managing for these stressors is difficult, because although fish stocking causes ecological problems, and mercury bioaccumulation poses human health risks, the cultural value of angling remains important. The goal of this dissertation was to better understand the issues of fish stocking and mercury bioaccumulation in a socioecological context: from the importance of trophic dynamics for mercury bioaccumulation in mountain lake fish, to the implications fish stocking and mercury bioaccumulation for mountain lake management. In Chapter 2, I identified the ecological, limnological, and landscape-level indicators of mercury bioaccumulation in mountain lake food webs in order to inform better ecosystem management. In Chapter 3, I conducted an experiment to test if fatty acid stable isotopes can partition benthic and terrestrial prey sources in fish in a simplified mountain lake food web, in hopes of providing a more informative tool for future food web studies. In Chapter 4, I used intercept surveys to determine the public perceptions of mountain lake i fisheries management in two national parks, and assess the risk mercury may pose to mountain lake anglers by determining fish consumption habits. I determined that nearshore forest cover and fish diet were the best predictors of mercury concentrations in mountain lake fish, but that our understanding of the role of terrestrial prey subsidies for fish is constrained by limitations in current diet tracing methods. My experiment demonstrates that using stable isotopes of fatty acids is a promising approach to distinguishing between benthic and terrestrial diet sources, but that doing so effectively requires an in-depth understanding of physiological context specific to the ecosystem of interest. Lastly, through my surveys, I found that thousands of anglers regularly consume fish from mountain lakes, and that while most visitors have concerns about the ecological impacts of fish stocking, anglers support a conservation- based approach that balances ecological health with the cultural value of fish stocking. This dissertation provides a unique set of tools that advance our understanding of food web dynamics and mercury bioaccumulation in mountain lakes, as well as the social value of these ecosystems. My results suggest that the most effective way to protect the health of mountain lakes and their visitors will be for managing agencies to collaborate with scientists and angling groups when making fisheries management decisions, and to invest in outreach about both the ecological and toxicological implications of fish stocking and mercury bioaccumulation in mountain lakes. The use of such socioecological research approaches is becoming progressively more important, as the threats of climate change and unstable regulatory protections for mountain ecosystems increase. ii Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without incredible amounts of support from my academic community, family, and friends. I would first like to thank my advisor, Dr. Angela Strecker, for her ongoing support and mentorship, and contributions to the development, funding, implementation, writing, and publishing of my research. Thank you to my committee: Dr. Max Nielsen Pincus for his contributions and support in publishing my first manuscript; Dr. Collin Eagles-Smith for providing generous research and analysis support, mentorship, and valuable advice and contributions to the preparation of my second manuscript; and to Dr. Yangdong Pan, Dr. Elise Granek, and Dr. Jennifer Allen for their ongoing support and feedback. I would also like to thank Dr. Martin Kainz, who has essentially been an honorary committee member and has been very generous with his time, mentorship, and collaboration. I would like to thank many others who have supported this research in a variety of ways. Thank you to my former and current lab mates, and fellow PSU students who have provided helpful conversation and insight, both with research and with the emotional demands of graduate school: Meredith Holgerson, Tim Elder, Zbigniew Grabowski, Amelia Johnson, Joey Peters, Sam Cimino, Meredith Jordan, Jeff Brittain, Crysta Gantz, Brian McGann, Lara Jansen, and Taylor Dodrill. Thanks also to Mary Ann Rozance, Ashlie Denton, and Manar Alattar for interdisciplinary engagement. Thank you to my field assistants Elyse Cogburn and Alec Trusty for their excellent attitudes and willingness to hike incredible distances with absurd amounts of weight on their backs, and to lab support from Kendra Lynn and the students from Camas High School. Thanks to Regina Rochefort, Ashley Rawhouser, Carmen Welch, Hugh Anthony, Rebecca iii Lofgren, Shannon Hagen, Steve Fradkin, and Adam Pfleeger at the National Parks Service who provided advice, field assistance, and data that made my fieldwork possible, and to the North Cascades field and trail crews for data collection and backcountry support. Thank you to James Willacker, John Pierce, Colleen Emery, Caitlin Rumrill, and Erica Johnson at USGS for their lab support. My work in Austria would not have been possible without research support and a welcoming community from Kathi Winter, Steffi Danner, Marina Jecmenica, Masumi Stadler, Fen Guo, Serena Rasconi, Mirjiam Jehele, Hannes Hagler, and Mike Meyer. I would also like to thank Gene Foster, Elena Nilsen, Jules Blais, and Joe Rasmussen for their advice and insight during the early stages of my project development, and to Jake Vander Zanden for sharing his code for the lake primary productivity models. My friends and family near and far provided invaluable emotional support throughout my degree. Thank you to my mom, Jennifer Chiapella, and my dad, Chris Chiapella, for sharing their love of the outdoors with me from a young age and inspiring me to pursue this path, and for the support that made it possible to make it this far. Thank you to the strong and resilient female role models in my family: my mom, my grandmothers Linda Rogers and Jacqueline Chiapella, and my aunts Julia Chiapella, Marie Chavis, and Delia Windwalker. Thank you to my in-laws, Kathy and Mark Blanchard, for their support. And thank you to my grandfather, Steven Chiapella, whom I wish I could share this work with. Thanks to my Portland community for helping me maintain balance and always lending an ear, especially John Perkins, Robyn Wardell, Carly and Leah Harrison, Vanessa and Alex Dolle, Sara Miller, and Meredith McEntee. Thank you to Lyndsay iv Brown, Kylie DiLiberto, Dana Johnson, and Shauna Landrey for providing support from afar. Perhaps most profoundly, thank you to my husband, Patrick Blanchard, for his support, patience, encouragement, flexibility, unwavering positive attitude, and love throughout my time in this program. I could not imagine doing any of this without you. Research funding for this dissertation was provided by the NSF GRPF (grant # 1638278), NSF IGERT (grant #0966376: “Sustaining Ecosystem Services to Support Rapidly Urbanizing Regions), the North Coast and Cascades Science Learning Network, NSF GROW and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), IGERT comparative funding, the Edward and Olive Bushby Scholarship Fund, Mazamas, and Sigma Xi. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. v Table of Contents Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………i
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