Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design

Department

Wildlife and Fisheries Resources

Committee Chair

Stuart Welsh

Committee Member

Brent Murry

Committee Member

Lara Hedrick

Abstract

Highway development and construction are frequently required to provide efficient transportation for an increasing human population. Specific to the Appalachian region, highway development has been a major goal since the mid 1900’s, with the aim of promoting economic growth and ease of travel. While highways provide necessary services to humans, their construction and presence often impact nearby waterways through multiple mechanisms including sedimentation and urbanization. To understand the degree of impact, streams are often monitored using biological data, which can be used to quantify effects. In this work I used freshwater macroinvertebrate communities to monitor changes in stream health surrounding two highway construction projects. I assessed changes to stream macroinvertebrate communities surrounding the construction of the Berkeley Springs 522 Bypass and a section of Corridor H. In both studies, macroinvertebrate community samples were collected repeatedly in the spring and fall, and used to quantify stream health using the West Virginia Stream Condition Index (WVSCI) and additional community metrics. I assessed changes in macroinvertebrate community using a variety of methods, including mixed effect models, generalized additive models, and multivariate analyses. Findings of the Berkeley Springs 522 Bypass study indicated subtle decreases to WVSCI, however raw WVSCI scores did not significantly change after construction began. I theorized that this could be due to effective sediment control devices or the poor preexisting health of the study streams. In the Corridor H construction study, I accounted for preexisting stream health by grouping sites by the health of the macroinvertebrate community before construction began. I then compared pre-construction to post-construction samples and found that both preexisting stream health and the disturbance severity were informative predictors of response to highway construction. I found that healthy streams exhibited a significant decrease in WVSCI, while more impaired streams showed no significant change in WVSCI. In both the Berkeley Springs study and the healthy sites of Corridor H I observed significant increases in Chironomidae relative abundance, Hilsenhoff Biotic Index, and relative abundance of the two most common taxa. Findings from these studies suggest that highway construction does impact downstream macroinvertebrate communities of healthy streams, even with the use of modern sediment control. However, for streams with preexisting poor health, highway construction may not be a novel disturbance and highway construction impacts may be difficult to realize. My findings suggest that building highways through unhealthy rather than healthy watersheds will likely cause lessor impacts to macroinvertebrate communities, which may inform future highway planning in West Virginia and surrounding regions.

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