The effects of land use on downstream water quality and biodiversity in a changing tropical mosaic landscape

Land use and other human activities often degrade downstream water quality, with consequences for ecosystem services and freshwater biodiversity. Understanding the relative effects of different land-use types across large spatial scales, however, remains challenging in heterogeneous landscapes. We investigated how landscape composition influences stream water quality and aquatic biodiversity in 46 catchments with perennial streams draining mosaic landscapes managed by smallholder farmers in southwest Ethiopia. Specifically, we assessed whether coffee agroforestry landscapes have intermediate effects on stream biodiversity compared to forests and agricultural lands. We measured multiple water quality parameters and sampled stream macroinvertebrates, while quantifying land-use proportions, settlement density, and an index representing the number and proximity of coffee washing stations within each catchment. Streams draining forest-dominated landscapes exhibited better water quality, char..., , # Data from: The effects of land use on downstream water quality and biodiversity in a changing tropical mosaic landscape

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.69p8cz9h4](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.69p8cz9h4)

## Description of the data and file structure

Here is the explanation for the archived data, Hirko et al., landscape ecology 2025, in the zipped file **dryad_files_OH.zip**.

R-code file:

**analysis_OH.R**

archived data: This script combines biodiversity, water chemistry, and land-use data to analyze how landscape composition and human activities influence stream water quality and macroinvertebrate communities, using multivariate analyses, regressions, and structural equation models. It also produces figures and tables supporting relationships among land use, environmental variables, and aquatic biodiversity.

**biodiviersity_OH.csv**: Species by site matrix of macroinvertebrate taxa and their abundance  

**Columns**

* tributarycode:  Stream unique ID

- The other columns (columns ...,