THE EFFECTS OF SPATIAL ANTHROPOGENIC LAND USE VARIATIONS ON THE SEDIMENTS AND MORPHOLOGY OF ORISKANY CREEK

Land use and vegetation cover of a watershed can have a large impact on the grain size and amount of sediment in a streambed, ultimately changing the stream’s morphology. Studying how variations in anthropogenic land use affect streambed sediments can have several important implications for local wildlife, water quality, and overall stream morphology. The goal of this study is to addresses the overarching question of whether analyses of the streambeds in several points along Oriskany Creek shows a relationship between fine sediment quantity and changes in the surrounding land use. To answer this question, this study analyzes five sites along Oriskany Creek, and one on Big Creek in a variety of points between Clinton and Deensboro, NY. The analysis conducted at each site included taking sediment samples, measuring clast axes and their degree of roundedness, recording stream velocity and morphology, and measuring sediment indicant through particle embeddedness measurements and burial in fine sediments. Sediment indicant is a term created for this study to combine two visual sediment estimates, as to streamline the comparison between the sites. This field data quantified the amount of sediment in the streambed and the amount of discharge at each site, which led to a comparative analysis between the sites. The results were then related to a watershed specific land use map. The watershed was demarcated using Arc Hydro analysis in ArcGIS, and the land uses were found as percentages of the watershed, as classified by the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program’s Wall-to-Wall Anthropogenic Land Use Trends (NWALT) dataset. An increase in the amount of fine sediment in the stream should be positively correlated with percentages of cleared land in the watershed. This result holds significance for understanding the effects of anthropogenic land use, and further supports ecological studies investigating the impacts of the increase in fine sediment on the inhabitants of these environments.