The relation of lotic fish and benthic macroinvertebrate condition indices to environmental factors across the conterminous USA

Abstract National and regional ecological assessments are essential for making rational decisions concerning water body conservation and management at those spatial extents. We analyzed data from 4597 samples collected from 3420 different sites across the conterminous USA during the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2008–2009 and 2013–2014 National Rivers and Streams Assessment. We evaluated the relationship between both fish and macroinvertebrate multimetric index (MMI) condition scores and 38 environmental factors to assess the relative importance of natural versus anthropogenic predictors, contrast site-scale versus watershed-scale predictors, and examine ecoregional and assemblage differences. We found that most of the environmental factors we examined were related to either fish and/or macroinvertebrate MMI scores in some fashion and that the factors involved, and strength of the relationship, varied by ecoregion and between assemblages. Factors more associated with natural conditions were usually less important in explaining MMI scores than factors more directly associated with anthropogenic disturbances. Local site-scale factors explained more variation than watershed-scale factors. Random forest and multiple regression models performed similarly, and the fish MMI-environment relationships were stronger than macroinvertebrate MMI-environment relationships. Among ecoregions, the strongest environmental relationships were observed in the Northern Appalachians and the weakest in the Southern Plains. The fish and macroinvertebrate MMIs were only weakly correlated with each other, and they generally responded more strongly to different groups of variables. These results support the use of multiple assemblages and the sampling of multiple environmental indicators in ecological assessments across large spatial extents.