Habitat Suitability Modelling of Benthic Macroinvertebrate Community in Wetlands of Lake Tana Watershed, Northwest Ethio
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WETLANDS IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD
Habitat Suitability Modelling of Benthic Macroinvertebrate Community in Wetlands of Lake Tana Watershed, Northwest Ethiopia Ayenew Gezie 1,2 & Worku Legesse Mulat 3 & Wassie Anteneh 1 & Eshete Dejen 4 & Helmut Kloos 5 & Seid Tiku Mereta 2 Received: 12 December 2018 / Accepted: 25 September 2019 # Society of Wetland Scientists 2019
Abstract Predictive modelling corroborates decision-making in the development of a standard habitat assessment protocol. In this study, we modelled environmental requirements of benthic macroinvertebrates. Classification and regression tree models (CART) and ordination analysis were performed to identify important variables affecting macroinvertebrate community pattern in the Lake Tana Watershed. A dataset of 95 samples was collected from eight wetlands. Among the modelled taxa, Coenagrionidae and Libellulidae had substantial predictive performance based on Kappa statistic (ĸ > 0.6) whereas Baetidae, Physidae, Tipulidae and Hydrophilidae had moderate predictive model performance (ĸ ≥ 0.4). Vegetation cover, leather tanning, vegetation clearance and nitrate ion were the topmost selected environmental variables influencing the occurrence of macroinvertebrate taxa. The conditional analysis depicted that the abundance of Coenagrionidae and Libellulidae increased with the increasing in vegetation cover. Overall, macroinvertebrate taxa have a clear habitat requirement within the habitat gradient studied and hence, could be a potential candidate for biomonitoring and provide valuable information in the development of a standard wetland assessment protocol. Keywords Classification tree . Lake Tana . Macroinvertebrate . Regression tree . Water quality . Wetlands
Introduction Anthropogenic activities are seriously affecting the ecological integrity of freshwater ecosystems at scales far exceed impacts on natural phenomena (Habersack et al. 2014). Wetlands are freshwater ecosystem most exposed to detrimental human activities despite their contributions to envi* Seid Tiku Mereta [email protected] 1
Department of Biology, Bahir Dar University, P.O. Box 79, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia
2
Department of Environmental Health Sciences and Technology, Jimma University, P.O. Box 378, Jimma, Ethiopia
3
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
4
Intergovernmental Authority on Development, P.O. Box. 2653, Djibouti, Republic of Djibouti
5
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
ronmental stability. Wetlands play an important role in the sustainability of natural system and human welfare. They perform carbon sequestration, waste treatment, nutrient cycling, flood reduction and are also rich in biodiversity (Costanza et al. 1997; Jacobs et al. 2009; Ramsar 2010; Moomaw et al. 2018). Furthermore, wetlands contribute a crucial role in ensuring safe water supplies, food security and livelihoods for millions of people living in developing countries, including
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