Impacts of 40 Years of Land Cover Change on Water Quality in Tampa Bay, Florida

Authors

Matthew J. McCarthy, University of South Florida
Frank E. Muller-Karger, University of South FloridaFollow
Daniel Otis, University of South FloridaFollow
Pablo Méndez-Lázaro, University of Puerto Rico

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2018

Keywords

land cover, land use change, water quality, Tampa Bay estuary, wind stress, precipitation

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1080/23312041.2017.1422956

Abstract

Land cover changes in the Tampa Bay watershed (Florida) over the past four decades were examined along with precipitation and wind observations to help understand causes of long-term changes in turbidity and chlorophyll concentration within the Tampa Bay estuary. Water quality showed a statistically significant relationship to land cover fraction in the watershed compared to long-term precipitation or wind stress. Redundancy Analyses with Akaike’s Information Criterion and non-parametric multiple regressions determined that turbidity and chlorophyll concentration decreased bay-wide from 1974–2012 with increased developed land fraction (R2 > 0.75, p-value < 0.05). Various segments of the estuary showed different significant responses to developed land (R2 > 0.75, p-value < 0.05), agricultural land (R2 > 0.93, p-value < 0.02), bare land (R2 = 0.77, p-value = 0.001), and wind stress (R2 = 0.91, p-value = 0.04) at different times of year.

Rights Information

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Was this content written or created while at USF?

Yes

Citation / Publisher Attribution

Cogent Geoscience, v. 4, art.1422956

Scholar Commons Citation

McCarthy, Matthew J.; Muller-Karger, Frank E.; Otis, Daniel; and Méndez-Lázaro, Pablo, "Impacts of 40 Years of Land Cover Change on Water Quality in Tampa Bay, Florida" (2018). Marine Science Faculty Publications. 806.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/msc_facpub/806