Hydrobiologia 494: 5–10, 2003. B. Kronvang (ed.), The Interactions between Sediments and Water. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
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Urbanization, sedimentation, and the homogenization of fish assemblages in the Etowah River Basin, USA D. M. Walters1,3 , D. S. Leigh2 & A. B. Bearden2 1 Institute
of Ecology and 2 Department of Geography, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, U.S.A. Environmental Protection Agency, National Exposure Research Laboratory, 26 W. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45268, U.S.A. E-mail:
[email protected] 3 U.S.
Key words: assemblage structure, endemism, erosion, land use, stream gradient, suspended sediment Abstract We tested the hypothesis that urbanization alters stream sediment regimes and homogenizes fish assemblages in 30 sub-basins of the Etowah River. Sediment variables included average particle size (mean phi) of the stream bed, percent fines (
