Anthropogenic land‐use change intensifies the effect of low flows on stream fishes

1. As ecosystems experience simultaneous disturbances, it is critical to understand how multiple stressors interact to affect ecological change. Land-use change (LUC) and extreme flow events are two important stressors that could interact to affect fish populations. 2. We evaluated the individual and interactive effects of discharge and LUC associated with oil and natural gas development (ONGD) on populations of two stream fishes over a seven-year period. We used repeated-state (i.e., abundance trends) and rate (i.e., colonization and persistence) responses to advance our understanding of flow-ecology relationships in a multiple-stressor framework. 3. Overall, fish abundance, colonization, and persistence declined in association with discharge. The effect of LUC associated with ONGD differed between species, with the abundance of Mottled Sculpin declining and Mountain Sucker increasing. We found both synergistic and antagonistic interactions between discharge and LUC. LUC intensified t...