Spatial weighting of land use and temporal weighting of antecedent discharge improves prediction of stream condition

Abstract

Land management to protect streams requires knowing which parts of the landscape most strongly influence stream condition. Understanding how flow through landscapes and along streams affects such land-use impacts requires knowing the period of antecedent discharge that most strongly influences condition. Both considerations require determination of optimal weighting schemes for predictors of stream condition. We calculated forest cover weighted by flow-path distance to 572 urban, peri-urban, and rural sites-in the Melbourne, Australia, region-sampled for macroinvertebrates, and antecedent discharge weighted by time preceding each of 1,723 samples. Using mixed linear models that accounted for..