Abstract
Watershed development and anthropogenic sources of nitrogen are among leading causes of negative impacts to aquatic ecosystems around the world. The δ(15)N of aquatic biota can be used as indicators of anthropogenic sources of nitrogen enriched in (15)N, but this mostly has been done at small spatial extents or to document effects of point sources. In this study, we sampled 77 sites along a forest to urban land cover gradient to examine food webs and the use of δ(15)N of periphyton and macroinvertebrate functional feeding groups (FFGs) as indicators of watershed development and nitrogen effects on streams. Functional feeding groups had low δ(15)N variability among taxa within sites. Mean absolute differences between individual taxa and their respective site FFG means were < 0.55‰, whereas site means of δ(15)N of FFGs had ranges of approximately 7-12‰ among sites. The δ(15)N of periphyton and macroinvertebrate FFGs distinguished least disturbed streams from those with greater watershed urbanization, and they were strongly correlated with increasing nitrogen concentrations and watershed impervious cover. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling, using δ(15)N of taxa, showed that changes in macroinvertebrate assemblages as a whole were associated with forest-to-urban and increasing nitrogen gradients. Assuming an average +3.4‰ per trophic level increase, δ(15)N of biota indicated that detrital pathways likely were important to food web structure, even in streams with highly developed watersheds. We used periphyton and macroinvertebrate FFG δ(15)N to identify possible management goals that can inform decisions affecting nutrients and watershed land use. Overall, the δ(15)N of periphyton and macroinvertebrates were strong indicators of watershed urban development effects on stream ecosystems, and thus, also could make them useful for quantifying the effectiveness of nitrogen, stream, and watershed management efforts.