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Study

Citation

Shenton, M. D., Nichols, S. J., Bray, J. P., Moulding, B. J. G., & Kefford, B. J. (2021). The Effects of Road De-icing Salts on Water Quality and Macroinvertebrates in Australian Alpine Areas. Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology.

Study description

The purpose of this paper was to determine the effect of road de-icing on salinity in Australian alpine streams and the macroinvertebrate communities.Stream macroinvertebrate community composition differed at sites receiving run-off from road salting activities near Perisher, NSW.

Response

Cause term/trajectory

Water quality - major ions (total) (Increase)

Cause description

Elevated stream salinity - the amount of inorganic salts dissolved in water i.e. increased salt concentrations (as measured by continuous measurements of electrical conductivity (EC) and periodic measurements of chloride concentrations) in streams.

Effect term/trajectory

Invertebrates - community structure (Change)

Effect description

Stream macroinvertebrate community composition differed at sites receiving run-off from road salting activities near Perisher. Abundances of Oligochaeta (worms) (up to 11-fold), Dugesiidae (flat worms) (up to fourfold), and Aphroteniinae (chironomids) (up to 14-fold) increased, whereas Leptophlebiidae (mayflies) decreased by up to 100% compared with non-salted sites. Considering all sites separately, i.e., not as site-pairs, permutational ANOSIM demonstrated a small, but statistically significant difference in the macroinvertebrate assemblage structure at sites receiving salt runoff (salted sites) and those sites not receiving salt runoff (unsalted sites) (R = 0.167; p = 0.007).

Response measure type

Spearman correlation coefficient

Response measure value

0.167

Statistical significance

0.007

Response measure description

Considering all sites separately, i.e., not as site-pairs, permutational ANOSIM demonstrated a small, but statistically significant difference in the macroinvertebrate assemblage structure at sites receiving salt runoff (salted sites) and those sites not receiving salt runoff (unsalted sites) (R = 0.167; p = 0.007).

Design

Source data

Field

Study type

Observation

Study design

Control/reference vs. treatment/impact (no before)

Number of independent control or reference sampling units

4

Number of indendent impact or treatment sampling units

4

Sample size used in analysis

8

Design description

paired-site locations were selected in subalpine areas (hereafter alpine areas) where road de-icing salts are applied to some of the roads. At each locations, one site was situated upstream of a road (reference site) to provide a baseline for comparison with a second site immediately downstream of the road (test site). Paired sites will be referred to as site-pairs hereafter. Individual sites within a site-pair, either upstream or downstream of roads, will be referred to as sites hereafter. Four of the site-pairs were located near Perisher Ski Resort within Kosciuszko National Park in New South Wales (NSW).

Context

Climate

Cold (continental)

Country

Australia

Habitat

Stream/river

Spatial extent

Reach/section

Temporal extent

Months

Context description

two streams receive runoff from salt de-icing activities. Hereafter, these streams are referred to as salted streams. The other streams (two streams at Perisher) received road runoff from a road with no recent application of salt, because the road is closed in winter. Hereafter, these streams will be referred to as nonsalted streams. The purpose of sampling at site-pairs on the nonsalted streams was to provide a control or baseline with which to compare samples from salted site-pairs, thus allowing greater confidence when linking results to road de-icing salts rather than any effect of roads (e.g., from pollutants coming from vehicles).