Defining potentially toxic metal and nutrient baselines for aquatic habitats of Katmai National Park
Smith SC, Love A, Munk L, Miller J. 2006. Defining potentially toxic metal and nutrient baselines for aquatic habitats of Katmai National Park. Anchorage, AK
Aquatic habitats sustain the health and economic vitality of Southwest Alaska and its National Park Units. Katmai National Park exhibits some of the most extensive and truly pristine aquatic habitats in North America. The importance of maintaining high quality aquatic habitats within Katmai National Park and Preserve is identified in ANILCA (1980) where Katmai was expanded to: “maintain unimpaired water habitat..” The need to manage water resources is also established in the Katmai General Management Plan (1986): “Identify, protect, and perpetuate Katmai’s outstanding… water features in their wilderness environment;” and the Katmai Resource Management Plan (PMP 1994): “it is necessary that a baseline for water quality…be established against which changes or degradation may be detected and quantified.” Further the RMP states: “little information exists on the fundamental process of nutrient flow through the Katmai ecosystems. This information is essential to predict ecological consequences of management decisions and to determine the effects of human induced changes on the system.” To these ends Park Service managers need tools that not only detect degradation in water quality but also integrate biotic and ecosystem functions with change. Freshwater mussels are good indicators of environmental conditions because they are long lived, sessile, bio-concentrate contaminants, and they are sensitive to changes in environmental conditions (Havlik and Marking 1987; Williams and Neves 2003). At a national level (WRD 2003), the NPS has recognized the value of freshwater mussels to Park ecosystems and their value as bioindicators of their environment. The distribution, abundance, and ecological roles of Alaska’s freshwater mussel species, however, have been poorly documented. Recent studies (Smith and Foster, 2005) have confirmed that the Katmai region is home to the Beringian endemic species Anodonta beringiana. In many lakes that this species inhabits it is thought to represent a significant proportion of the biomass of the resident fish and invertebrates. This project has been initiated in order to establish a baseline data set for (1) the occurrence and distribution of freshwater mussels, (2) potentially toxic metals including lead, cadmium, copper, and zinc and associated water quality parameters and (3) nutrient loading/eutrophication for aquatic habitats of Katmai National Park.