Youghiogheny River Research Articles

Lepidopteran Granivory Reduces Seed Counts in a Rare Species of Riparian Scour Prairies

In Pennsylvania Baptisia australis var. australis is found along only four waterways: the Allegheny River, Youghiogheny River, Clarion River, and Red Bank Creek. Because of its limited distribution and small number of extant populations, the species is considered state-threatened in Pennsylvania. In addition, the riparian prairie habitat that Pennsylvania Baptisia australis var. australis is restricted to is also in decline and considered vulnerable. Because of these conservation concerns, insights into the natural history of the taxon in the state is valuable and will inform conservation efforts. Field surveys and fruit collections along the Allegheny River and herbarium collections were used to investigate and document granivory in Pennsylvania Baptisia australis var. australis, a phenomenon recorded in other parts of the species' range, but not previously reported on in Pennsylvania. Using a model of best fit, the number of seeds found in fruit was found to be significantly impacted by the presence of granivores. We also report that visual surveys of fruits in the field are found to be accurate assessments of the presence and potential impact of granivores. In turn, our results will inform the conservation and management of Baptisia australis var. australis populations in Pennsylvania and highlight the importance of field surveys in protecting threatened taxa.

Investigating Crowding at the Lower Youghiogheny River, Pennsylvania, U.S.

This research seeks the factors that influence perceived crowding at Ohiopyle State Park, located in southeastern Pennsylvania (U.S.). While Ohiopyle is one of the most visited rivers for whitewater recreation in the eastern part of the U.S., and with a growing demand for this type of recreation, there is the need to assess crowding issues at Ohiopyle. For this study, private boaters at the Lower Youghiogheny River were asked to complete a survey during the summer 2014 recreation season. A total of 398 on-site surveys were completed. Regression analysis showed that crowding was significantly influenced by take-out waiting time, expected use level, reported and acceptable level of use. Management implications are described for Ohiopyle State Park and the Lower Youghiogheny River. Subscribe to JPRA

Smoke screen foraging: an observation of an unusual foraging behavior of the northern pike, Esox lucius.

The foraging behavior of the northern pike is well documented. Northern pike often remain motionless while waiting for prey, a strategy known as lie-in-wait. Sometimes northern pike will cruise weed lines and mudflats in search of prey. When prey is encountered, the northern pike often initiates its fast-start attack, a high-powered burst of acceleration from a stationary or near resting position. In the initial stages of attack, the northern pike contorts its body into an S-shape, with median fins erect. Then large-amplitude movements are achieved with its long and streamlined muscular body, where the increased surface area of the erected posteriorly-positioned median fins propels and thrusts the fish forward toward the prey. Herein, we document an unusual foraging behavior of a northern pike approaching a fishing lure, an observation that was video-recorded while ice fishing on Deep Creek Lake, a reservoir in the Youghiogheny River drainage of western Maryland. The 68.6 cm (27 in.) TL northern pike approached and hesitated at about 15 cm from the lure, then paddled the bottom sediment with an alternate rowing motion of its left and right pectoral fins. This fin-churning motion created a large cloud or plume of sediment. The pike, while completely hidden in the expanding sediment plume, swam forward and then upward to engulf the lure. The use of a sediment plume during foraging is similar to a military maneuver known as a smoke screen, thus we label this unusual behavior as smoke screen foraging.

New Paths Toward a History of Pennsylvania Outdoor Recreation

��� n his study of nineteenth-century southwestern Pennsylvania, historian Scott Martin describes leisure as “a contested cultural space, in which ideas about ethnicity, class, and gender were articulated and developed.” 1 Studies of outdoor recreation, a specific type of leisure taking place in natural settings, are valuable to historians of Pennsylvania for what they reveal about the ways groups chose to spend their free time and the implications for the state’s environmental, social, and political history. While outdoor recreation of various forms has always been a salient feature of life, the acceleration of industrialization and economic growth during the second half of the nineteenth century brought many Americans increased time and disposable income to spend on pursing various forms of recreation. As we know, this trend has continued through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to the point where outdoor recreation drives a multibillion-dollar industry that annually services more than 159 million recreationists. 2 In Pennsylvania, forms of outdoor recreation vary widely, from walking along a trail through Gifford Pinchot State Park and plunging a raft through the Youghiogheny River’s whitewater I

Physiographic and Anthropogenic Factors Influencing Fish Community Composition in Tributaries to the Youghiogheny River in Pennsylvania

Abstract We evaluated the status of fish communities from 30 first- to fourth-order wadeable Youghiogheny River (YR) tributaries located in the Allegheny Mountain Section (AMS) and Pittsburgh Low Plateau (PLP) physiographic provinces in Pennsylvania. The AMS is underlain primarily by geologic formations dominated by the Allegheny Group, while the Casselman Formation underlies much of the PLP. Streams draining the AMS were primarily forested, low-order (1–2), high-gradient, and poorly-buffered with minimal cultural influences. By contrast, the majority of the PLP was drained by low-gradient, well-buffered, valley streams of order ≥2, with varying anthropogenic influences. In order to characterize connectivity, all streams were sampled from their mainstream junctions to an endpoint 200 m upstream utilizing back-pack electrofishing. A total of 366 fishes representing seven families, 17 genera, and 22 species were collected from AMS streams, while the PLP yielded 2738 fishes representing 8 families, 25 genera...

Beyond the Furnace:

The year 2009 was especially significant for Pittsburgh. The city had just celebrated its 250th anniversary with a year-long series of concerts, parades, and other public spectacles. Among these were renovations to the iconic Point State Park, the completion of the Great Allegheny Passage bicycle trail to Cumberland, Maryland, and a “Parade of Champions” at the Senator John Heinz History Center featuring the legends of Pittsburgh sports. City leaders saw in these festivities an opportunity for fostering “improved regional perceptions of Pittsburgh” and “defining a vision for our region’s future.” The marketing blitz paid quick and unexpected dividends when in May the Obama administration announced the community would host an upcoming G20 Summit. The president’s emphasis on “the green economy” meshed perfectly with the booster narrative of Pittsburgh as “a great poster child [for] economic transformation.” Combined with the Steelers’ Super Bowl victory and the Penguins winning the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup, by the end of the year residents of the ’Burgh had plenty to justify claims that they were back from the ruins of deindustrialization. Though marked by less fanfare, 2009 also witnessed the publication of two fascinating books by the University of Pittsburgh Press that drew heavily on these same themes of economic and environmental transformation. Designed explicitly for an audience beyond the confines of the academy, Franklin Toker’s Pittsburgh: A New Portrait and Edward K. Muller’s edited volume, An Uncommon Passage: Travelling through History on the Great Allegheny Passage Trail , are also of importance to scholars for their insight into the process of community and regional regeneration in the postindustrial era.

Bayesian model for flow-class dependent distributions of fecal-indicator bacterial concentration in surface waters

A Bayesian statistical water quality model is demonstrated to predict fecal-indicator bacterial concentrations for waterbodies without sufficient monitoring data for data-intensive modeling techniques. Using a truncated bivariate normal likelihood function and the readily available observations of flow and bacterial concentration, the Bayesian approach propagates the uncertainty in the model parameterization to the final predictions of in-stream bacterial concentration. The proposed model captures the variation in the magnitude of bacterial loading between dry and wet conditions by estimating separate sets of model parameters for different flow conditions, but also has the capability to pool the data among flow conditions. The model can be used in two ways: first, the model specifies the percent of time that the recreational season in-stream concentration is not in compliance with the relevant water quality standard, and second, the model estimates the necessary bacterial load reduction for multiple flow conditions to meet the relevant water quality standard. Using an eleven year monitoring record for a site sampled at a monthly frequency on the Youghiogheny River in southwestern Pennsylvania, USA, the model parameters are updated and posterior predictions are generated for each 2-year increment. After six years of sampling, the predicted percent of time that the recreational season in-stream bacterial concentration is not in compliance with the relevant water quality is 82% with 95% CI(80,85), and the bacterial load reductions required to meet the standard are 14.7 CI(14.6,14.8), 14.5 CI(14.3, 14.6), and 14.0 CI(13.9, 14.2) log 10(cfu/day) for the high, normal, and dry flow conditions, respectively. The change in estimated load reduction and percent exceedance resulting from additional monitoring for this site becomes small after six years of sampling, indicating that a decision does not need to be postponed for additional monitoring.

Sliding Behavior in Nearctic River Otters: Locomotion or Play?

Abstract The popular literature often depicts river otters as extremely playful. However, some researchers have suggested that, contrary to popular belief, the much-noted sliding behavior of river otters is only a form of locomotion, not a form of play. While using remote video cameras to monitor a population of river otters reintroduced to the Youghiogheny River in southwestern Pennsylvania, we obtained a video of three otters sliding across a snow-covered surface. Collectively, the otters slid 16 times for a total of 53 seconds. Based on established definitions of animal play, our observation supports the popular notion that sliding can be play behavior in wild river otters.

Rapid detection of bioavailable heavy metals in sediment porewaters using acid-volatile sulfide gel probes

The acid-volatile sulfide (AVS) pool in anoxic sediments is believed to play an important role in the sequestration of heavy metals, forming less soluble mineral sulfides via replacement and coprecipitation reactions. In this study, novel sediment gel probes containing immobilized FeS or MnS particles were evaluated for their ability to concentrate and detect reactive heavy metals in solution. MnS-containing gels were more effective than FeS gels at concentrating most metals in solution external to the gels, but they were more difficult to prepare and use. Copper reacted with FeS in gel probes to form one or more secondary sulfide minerals insoluble in 1 N HCl. The pixel density of digital images of these gels was highly correlated with the concentration of copper in gels and total copper in solution, suggesting a method for rapid screening of bioavailable heavy metals. Copper added to Youghiogheny River (PA, USA) sediments could be detected using this approach.

English

The Irwin Syncline bituminous coal basin has been extensively underground mined with numerous complexes (>95% mined over a 240 km 2 area; Pullman-Swindell, 1977). Earlier work in the Irwin Syncline demonstrated the benefit of dividing the basin into smaller sub-basins based on equilibrium flow conditions established over the past 30 years (Winters et al. 1999; Winters and Capo, in press). MODFLOW numerical modeling was undertaken to quantify the hydraulic relationships within the basin and to corroborate sub-basin delineation over time (~ 5-15 yrs) as post-mining equilibrium hydraulic conditions develop. Boundary conditions are imposed by (1) the coal outcrop, which limits hydraulic influence, (2) the low hydraulic conductivity of the coal seam floor (typically clay, K~10 -8 cm/sec), and (3) large surface water bodies. Because of these constraints, recharge can be assumed to emanate primarily from infiltration through the overburden rocks. Basin discharge can be directly measured from the large discharges that developed following basin flooding. In the Irwin basin, the overburden rocks range in thickness from 0 m at the outcrop to 200 m in the interior. Overburden units were modeled as four distinct hydraulic conductivity zones that correspond to classic mine subsidence profile models (Singh 1992). Initial model results indicated that mine water is discharging through the intervening overburden to the Youghiogheny River, which overlies the southwestern portion of the basin. To calibrate the model, 15 mine pool monitoring points from the 1970's were used to establish known hydraulic head elevations in the northern 2/3 of the basin. Hydraulic head elevations in the southern 1/3 were determined from current pumping elevations at two treatment plants in the area. Preliminary results from the calibrated model demonstrate the hydrologic impact of interior coal mine barriers on the flow regime and confirm that the largest discharges (Q >0.18 m 3 /s) are the dominant influence on the flow system. Future modeling efforts will concentrate on sensitivity analysis of recharge and other hydraulic parameters and on refinement of methods used for modeling the mine-void aquifer system.

Numerical Modeling of a Large Mined Synclinal Coal Basin, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania

The Irwin Syncline bituminous coal basin has been extensively underground mined with numerous complexes (>95% mined over a 240 km 2 area; Pullman-Swindell, 1977). Earlier work in the Irwin Syncline demonstrated the benefit of dividing the basin into smaller sub-basins based on equilibrium flow conditions established over the past 30 years (Winters et al. 1999; Winters and Capo, in press). MODFLOW numerical modeling was undertaken to quantify the hydraulic relationships within the basin and to corroborate sub-basin delineation over time (~ 5-15 yrs) as post-mining equilibrium hydraulic conditions develop. Boundary conditions are imposed by (1) the coal outcrop, which limits hydraulic influence, (2) the low hydraulic conductivity of the coal seam floor (typically clay, K~10 -8 cm/sec), and (3) large surface water bodies. Because of these constraints, recharge can be assumed to emanate primarily from infiltration through the overburden rocks. Basin discharge can be directly measured from the large discharges that developed following basin flooding. In the Irwin basin, the overburden rocks range in thickness from 0 m at the outcrop to 200 m in the interior. Overburden units were modeled as four distinct hydraulic conductivity zones that correspond to classic mine subsidence profile models (Singh 1992). Initial model results indicated that mine water is discharging through the intervening overburden to the Youghiogheny River, which overlies the southwestern portion of the basin. To calibrate the model, 15 mine pool monitoring points from the 1970's were used to establish known hydraulic head elevations in the northern 2/3 of the basin. Hydraulic head elevations in the southern 1/3 were determined from current pumping elevations at two treatment plants in the area. Preliminary results from the calibrated model demonstrate the hydrologic impact of interior coal mine barriers on the flow regime and confirm that the largest discharges (Q >0.18 m 3 /s) are the dominant influence on the flow system. Future modeling efforts will concentrate on sensitivity analysis of recharge and other hydraulic parameters and on refinement of methods used for modeling the mine-void aquifer system.

Evaluation of Airborne Thermal Infrared Imagery for Locating Mine Drainage Sites in the Lower Youghiogheny River Basin, Pennsylvania, USA

Nighttime high-resolution airborne thermal infrared imagery (TIR) data were collected in the predawn hours during Feb 5-8 and March 11-12, 1999, from a helicopter platform for 72.4 km of the Youghiogheny River, from Connellsville to McKeesport, in southwestern Pennsylvania. The TIR data were used to identify sources of mine drainage from abandoned mines that discharge directly into the Youghiogheny River. Image-processing and geographic information systems (GIS) techniques were used to identify 70 sites within the study area as possible mine drainage sources. The combination of GIS datasets and the airborne TIR data provided a fast and accurate method to target the possible sources. After field reconnaissance, it was determined that 24 of the 70 sites were mine drainage. This paper summarizes: the procedures used to process the TIR data and extract potential mine-drainage sites; methods used for verification of the TIR data; a discussion of factors affecting the TIR data; and a brief summary of water quality.

County Must Pay to Move Lines

In 1989, two CSX Transportation freight trains were traveling on adjacent railroad tracks. Because of heavy rainfall and flooding, the tracks collapsed, and the trains derailed while passing each other. One car broke open and its contents, corn syrup, flowed into the nearby Youghiogheny River, killing 10,000 fish. A criminal complaint was filed against CSX for violation of the state Fish & Game Code, which made it a crime, regardless of intent, to allow any substance poisonous to fish to flow into any waters of the state. The trial court dismissed the charge, saying it was necessary to establish a voluntary act for a violation of the law.

Reliability of Flood Warning Systems

Engineering planning and design of a local flood warning system should include a reliability analysis. The reliability of warnings can be quantified in terms of the relative operating characteristic—a relation between the probability of detection and the probability of false warning for a zone of the floodplain—and its transformation, the performance tradeoff Characteristic—a relation between the expected number of detections and the expected number of false warnings per year for a zone. Numerical procedures are derived for computing these two values. Two case studies in Pennsylvania are reported. The case of the city of Milton, on the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, demonstrates fundamental trade-offs between the reliability and the lead time of warnings. The case of Connellsville, on the Youghiogheny River, demonstrated synergistic gains in warning reliability due to a coupled solution: a flood-control dam of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the river forecasting technology of the National Weather Service.

An intergeneric hybrid, Campostoma anomalum × Rhinichthys atratulus, from the Youghiogheny River drainage, West Virginia

The first record of a natural intergeneric hybrid of Campostoma anomalum × Rhinichthys atratulus is described from the Youghiogheny River drainage. Morphometric and meristic characters of the parents and hybrid were used to calculate a mean hybrid index value of 49.8. Dentition of the hybrid was intermediate as was intestinal coiling. In addition to the hybrid index, C. anomalum, R. atratulus and the hybrid were examined electrophoretically. Of the 32 enzymatic loci resolved, six (ADH-A, EST-B, LDH-A, PGM-A, SDH-B and SOD-C) showed hybrid inheritance patterns identical to the enzyme pattern obtained by mixing tissue extracts composed of the two parental species.

The Zoogeography of the Fishes of the Youghiogheny River System, Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia

A total of 266 fish collections were made at 172 stations in the Youghiogheny River drainage, the largest tributary to the Monongahela River. Collections were made using seines, electrofishing gear, gill nets and trap nets. A comprehensive literature review yielded 99 species of fishes reported from the Youghiogheny River system. Six species collected during this survey (Amia calva, Carassius auratus, Ericymba buccata, Notropis rubellus, Ictalurus catus and Fundulus diaphanus) established new distributional records for the system, increasing the total to 105 species. Of this total, 78 species were verified either by our collections (57 species), museum records (10) or stocking records (11), whereas 27 could not be verified. Of the 27 unverified species, 21 are expected to occur and six are considered misidentifications or erroneous records. An additional 24 species are expected to have occurred historically in the Youghiogheny or have the potential to do so based on their distribution in the Monongahela or Allegheny rivers. Of the 78 species of fishes confirmed to have occurred in the Youghiogheny River, 57 were collected during this survey, 11 were unsuccessful introductions and nine have probably been extirpated. One species, Esox masquinongy, is considered extant, but was not collected during this study. The ichthyofauna of the Youghiogheny River system was largely derived from Teays River by dispersal up the newly formed Ohio River after the onset of Pleistocene glaciation. Two species, Clinostomus elongatus and Catostomus catostomus, dispersed into the Youghiogheny from the N during the Pleistocene. Rhinichthys atratulus atratulus dispersed into the Youghiogheny from Potomac River via stream capture. Several species, (Jampostoma a. anomalum, Ericymba buccata, Nocomis micropogon, Notropis spilopterus and Etheostoma b. blennioides, may have used Youghiogheny-Potomac stream captures as a dispersal route eastward into the Atlantic slope.

A List of the Ferns Found in the Vicinity of Ohio Pyle, Pa.

The little village of Ohio Pyle lies in the southeastern part of Fayette county, Pa., where the Youghiogheny river has cut its gorge down through the lower Carboniferous. The river tumbles over a ledge of the upper Devonian, ordinarily spoken of as the Catskill Conglomerate, making a picturesque fall of some 15 or 20 feet. The whole gorge is beautiful and hundreds of tourists, attracted by its charm, visit the spot each year. A Symposium of Eastern Botanists was held here during the Fourth of July week, 1905. This symposium included representatives of the Torrey Botanical Club, the Botanical Society of Washington, the Philadelphia Botanical Club, and the Botanical Society of Western Pennsylvania. The region contains many plants of interest to the general botanist as well as the fern student, and since so far as is known no list of the flora was ever published, it may not be out of place to include a few other plants with the ferns.