Impacts of land use metrics on urban stream health: Buffalo Creek, North Carolina, USA

Abstract

Urban stream syndrome refers to a widely recognized set of physical, chemical, and biological transformations of stream systems in the urban environment. There are multiple ways to characterize both the predictor variables (degree of urbanization) and the response variables (hydrology, geomorphology, water quality, aquatic ecosystems) of urban stream syndrome. Most studies have focused on land cover as a predictor variable, rather than the ways in which urban land is used. Here, nine small catchments in the Buffalo Creek drainage of Greensboro, North Carolina, USA, were used as a study area with a wide range of different urban land uses within a highly urbanized environment. Relationships were examined between several different predictor variables (National Land Cover Database class, impervious surface area, tax parcels) and response variables (indicators of physical habitat and water quality). The most consistent relationships were between all land use/cover predictor variables and the response variables of conductivity (R2 ranging from 0.07 to 0.21, p ≤ 0.02), nitrate (R2 from 0.57 to 0.72, p < 0.001), and chloride (R2 from 0.45 to 0.52, p < 0.001). These results can help managers of urban stream systems by suggesting zoning patterns as an additional metric that can be used to quantify urbanization impacts on streams.