Abstract
Land use is a predominant threat to the ecological integrity of streams and rivers. Understanding land use-water quality interactions is essential for the development and prioritization of management strategies and, thus, the improvement of water quality. Weighting schemes for land use have recently been employed as methods to advance the predictive power of empirical models, however, their performance has seldom been explored for various water quality parameters. In this work, multiple landscape composition metrics were applied within headwater catchments of Central Europe to investigate how weighting land use with certain combinations of spatial and topographic variables, while implementing alternate distance measures and functions, can influence predictions of water quality. The predictive ability of metrics was evaluated for eleven water quality parameters using linear regression. Results indicate that stream proximity, measured with Euclidean distance, in combination with slope or log-transformed flow accumulation were dominant factors affecting the concentrations of pH, total phosphorus, nitrite and orthophosphate phosphorus, whereas the unweighted land use composition was the most effective predictor of calcium, electrical conductivity, nitrates and total suspended solids. Therefore, both metrics are recommended when examining land use-water quality relationships in small, submontane catchments and should be applied according to individual water quality parameter.
Highlights
It has been widely acknowledged that the ecological integrity of streams and rivers is intrinsically linked to the surrounding landscape[1,2,3]
Variation between landscape composition metrics. Both land use categories experienced changes in proportions when spatial proximity and topography were incorporated into landscape composition metrics
Landscape composition metrics were employed to discern the relative significance of stream proximity, slope and flow accumulation on predictions of water quality within headwater catchments via the incorporation of alternate spatial measures, functions and landscape variables
Summary
It has been widely acknowledged that the ecological integrity of streams and rivers is intrinsically linked to the surrounding landscape[1,2,3]. The concentration of overland runoff within each land use category is weighted according to the flow accumulation value determined by flow direction and preferential flow pathways from upslope areas Such metrics are suitable for examining the combined effects of land use position and hydrological processes[19]. Headwater streams and catchments are important for provisional ecosystem services (e.g., drinking water extraction) and the protection of biodiversity (e.g., nature reserves and core zones of national parks)[20] Tributaries act as both receptors and conveyors of landscape fluxes[21], allowing upstream land use activity to influence the entire river continuum[22,23]. The main objectives of this study are to (1) examine the variations in performance between landscape composition metrics, (2) investigate how the incorporation of stream proximity, slope and flow accumulation can influence the predictive ability of models, and (3) identify which landscape composition metric explains the most variation in water quality data
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