EPA/600/R-02/067 September 2002 Regional Assessment of Fish Health: A Prototype Methodology and Case Study for the Albemarle Pamlico River Basin, North Carolina by M. Craig Barber Robert M. Baca1 Sandra L. Bird John Doherty2 Linda R. Exum John M. Johnston Ray R. Lassiter3 Brenda Rashleigh Michael J. Cyterski Susan Colarullo4 Nicholas T. Loux Lourdes M. Prieto Christina J. Wright5 published by Ecosystems Research Division U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Athens, GA 30605-2700 1 Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service U.S. Department of Agriculture 4700 River Road, Unit 150 Riverdale, MD 20737-1236 2 Department of Civil Engineering University of Queensland Brisbane, Australia 3 Department of Marine Sciences University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602 4 U.S. Geological Survey U.S. Department of the Interior Trenton, NJ 5 National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior 4598 Mac Arthur Blvd, NW Washington, DC 20007 National Exposure Research Laboratory Office of Research and Development U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Research Triangle Park, NC 27711 Notice The research described in this document was funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through the Office of Research and Development. The research described herein was conducted at the Ecosystems Research Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Exposure Research Laboratory in Athens, Georgia. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use. Acknowledgments Many persons outside of the immediate BASE (Basin-scale Assessment of Sustainable Ecosystems) research team contributed to this report. Shelly Miller of the Virginia Game and Inland Fisheries provided assistance in compiling data on fish from Virginia, and Tom Jobes of Aquaterra provided assistance in the application of HSPF described in Chapter 6.2. John Doherty, who wrote much of the time series analysis software that underpins the work described in Chapter Sections 6.1 and 6.2, was supported as a Visiting Research Scientist at the University of Idaho, Idaho Falls. We also thank Gary Shenk (USEPA, Chesapeake Bay Program) and Stephen Kraemer (USEPA) for their contributions regarding Chapter sections 6.2 and 6.3. ii Foreword Environmental concerns are primarily ecological concerns. In the past, most regulations that have been implemented to protect ecological resources have done so with only implicit connections to organisms and the habitats and communities in which they live. Research that make such connections explicit is needed to improve current and future ecological risk assessments. Although sustainability of ecological resources is ultimately the goal of all environmental management, identification of what is meant by ecological sustainability is often not well defined. Nevertheless, it is clear that one area of needed research pertaining to this topic is the development of comparative risk approaches that can identify, generate, and evaluate alternative future scenarios. Such research also needs to be focused on regional environmental issues and concerns rather than simply local or site-specific issues. In this regard, river basins, sub-basins, and watersheds, defined by their network of water and material movement, are perhaps the most useful and well defined landscape units for which regional scale environment concerns must be routinely addressed. To address these issues and needs, the Ecosystems Research Division of the National Exposure Research Laboratory developed a research program in 1999 entitled Basin-scale Assessment of Sustainable Ecosystems (BASE). BASE's goal was to investigate and develop methods and approaches that integrate ecological, hydrological, and landscape processes with projections of socioeconomic demands on regional watersheds and river basins. Rosemarie C. Russo, Ph.D. Director Ecosystems Research Division Athens, Georgia iii Abstract BASE (Basin-Scale Assessments for Sustainable Ecosystems) is a research program developed by the Ecosystems Research Division of the National Exposure Research Laboratory to explore and formulate approaches for assessing the sustainability of ecological resources within watersheds and larger river basins. To give the program focus, BASE has focused on developing a conceptual framework to assess the sustainability of ecological resources in the Albemarle- Pamlico Basin, NC under the influence of the multiple stressors that might be imposed by human activities across the region. To make this project doable, BASE’s focus was narrowed further to deal only with the assessment of projected changes in various dimensions of fish health within the Albemarle-Pamlico Basin. A more complete assessment, however, would consider a wide variety of ecological resources, selected to represent many kinds of potential vulnerability. These could include dwindling habitats, altered climate that places many species of both animals and plants out of their physiological tolerance limits, and the continuing threat to biota across the region from a changing suite of environmental contaminants. The major components of BASE are: 1) identification and generation of stressor scenarios that directly or indirectly produce ecological effects; 2) hydrologic, hydrodynamic, and water quality simulations; and 3) fish endpoint simulations. Conceptually, analyses of projected socioeconomic and demographic changes within the basin are used to generate input scenarios for regionally distributed hydrological and water quality models. The resulting water quality scenarios are, in turn, used as inputs to various fish endpoint models whose outputs are used to assess the regional sustainability of fish health. According to the BASE conceptual framework, projected socioeconomic and demographic trends can be translated directly into future land use practices that directly alter 1) regional hydrologic patterns, 2) sediment, nutrient, and contaminant loadings to surface waters, 3) in-stream sediment transport and deposition, and 4) general water quality dynamics. Methods for translating projected urban development into impervious land use cover are described and discussed in detail. Methods for estimating the runoff of water, nutrients, pesticides, and sediments from the landscapes based on current or projected land use are also considered. To complete the framework, models for simulating regional hydrology, water quality, and fish community processes are described and reviewed. To illustrate how these components can be sequentially linked to assess fish health, a demonstration project aimed at assessing the ecological responses of fish communities within the Contentnea Creek watershed of the Albemarle-Pamlico basin is presented. iv Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................... iv 1. Introduction .............................................................................. 1 1.1. BASE Program Approach and Design ................................................. 3 1.2. Concepts and Definitions Related to Ecological Sustainability .............................. 8 2. Fish Health .............................................................................. 10 2.1. Ecological Dimensions ............................................................ 11 2.2. Human Use and Health Perspectives ................................................. 12 2.3. Stressors ....................................................................... 18 2.3.1. Disruption of Nominal Biological Processes ................................... 18 2.3.2. Alteration of Physical Habitats ............................................. 19 2.3.3. Chemical Contaminants ................................................... 19 2.3.3.1. Water Quality Issues ............................................. 19 2.3.3.2. Sediment Quality Issues .......................................... 20 2.3.4. Landscape and Non-point Source Issues ...................................... 20 3. Description of the Albemarle-Pamlico Basin .................................................... 22 3.1. Site Description.................................................................. 22 3.2. Socio-economic Development ...................................................... 24 3.2.1. Urban Development...................................................... 24 3.2.2. Agricultural Patterns and Issues............................................. 25 3.3. Regional Climate................................................................. 25 3.4. Regional Hydrology .............................................................. 26 3.4.1. Surface Water Hydrology ................................................. 26 3.4.2. Ground Water and Regional Geomorphology .................................. 26 3.4.2.1. Effects of Geologic Heterogeneities on Solute Transport ................. 26 3.4.2.2. Coastal Plain Geology ........................................... 28 3.4.3. Riparian and Wetland Issues ............................................... 31 3.5. Water Quality Issues .............................................................. 32 3.6. Biological Resources.............................................................. 34 3.6.1. Fish Biogeography and Biodiversity ......................................... 34 3.6.2. Sport and Commercial Fisheries ............................................ 35 3.6.3. Endangered and Threatened Fishes .......................................... 36 4. Identifying Nominal Conditions for Fish Health ................................................