Application of Biochemical and Physiological Indicators
for Assessing Recovery of Fish Populations in a Disturbed Stream
S. Marshall Adams
•
Kenneth D. Ham
Received: 30 September 2008 / Accepted: 7 December 2010 / Published online: 9 January 2011
Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Abstract Recovery dynamics in a previously disturbed
stream were investigated to determine the influence of a series
of remedial actions on stream recovery and to evaluate the
potential application of bioindicators as an environmental
management tool. A suite of bioindicators, representing five
different functional response groups, were measured annually
for a sentinel fish species over a 15 year period during which
a variety of remedial and pollution abatement actions were
implemented. Trends in biochemical, physiological, condi-
tion, growth, bioenergetic, and nutritional responses demon-
strated that the health status of a sentinel fish species in the
disturbed stream approached that of fish in the reference
stream by the end of the study. Two major remedial actions,
dechlorination and water flow management, had large effects
on stream recovery resulting in an improvement in the bio-
energetic, disease, nutritional, and organ condition status of
the sentinel fish species. A subset of bioindicators responded
rather dramatically to temporal trends affecting all sites, but
some indicators showed little response to disturbance or to
restoration activities. In assessing recovery of aquatic sys-
tems, application of appropriate integrative structural indices
along with a variety of sensitive functional bioindicators
should be used to understand the mechanistic basis of stress
and recovery and to reduce the risk of false positives.
Understanding the mechanistic processes involved between
stressors, stress responses of biota, and the recovery dynamics
of aquatic systems reduces the uncertainty involved in envi-
ronmental management and regulatory decisions resulting in
an increased ability to predict the consequences of restora-
tion and remedial actions for aquatic systems.
Keywords Stream recovery Á Disturbance Á
Fish populations Á Physiological responses Á
Environmental stress
Introduction
A primary goal of environmental management is to protect
and sustain ecosystems and to restore previously disturbed
systems to levels acceptable to society and which are con-
sistent with environmental resource management plans.
During the last two decades, ecosystem restoration has
attained a central role in natural resource management
(Muotka and Laasonen 2002), and this trend has been par-
alleled by a dramatic expansion of restoration ecology as a
scientific discipline (Young 2000). Even though restoration
is generally considered to be a less desirable substitute than
preservation for maintaining ecosystem integrity (Young
2000), its potential as an environmental management tool, or
even as a means of preventing the continual loss of biodi-
versity, has been widely acknowledged (Muotka and
Laasonen 2002). Effective recovery and restoration man-
agement of aquatic ecosystems involves not only under-
standing the dynamics of the recovery process along spatial
and temporal scales, but also defining realistic criteria for
success of recovery (Underwood 1996; Ormerod 2003;
The submitted manuscript has been authored by a contractor of the
U.S. Government under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.
Accordingly, the U.S. Government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-
free license to publish or reproduce the published form of this
contribution, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes.
S. M. Adams (&)
Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA
e-mail: adamssm@ornl.gov
K. D. Ham
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory,
PO Box 999, Richland, WA 99352, USA
123
Environmental Management (2011) 47:1047–1063
DOI 10.1007/s00267-010-9599-7