The interactive effects of nitrate and road salt on benthic algal assemblages in an artificial stream experiment

To investigate and quantify the multi-tiered responses of benthic algal assemblages to the impacts of road salt and nitrate, we created artificial flow-through streams with terracotta vessels with nutrient diffusing substrates (NDS) containing varying concentrations of both salt (0-7500 mg/L) and nitrate (0-5.9 mg/L) and incubated for 56 days during the summer. This work was done at the University of Michigan Biological Station's stream research facility. The streams and algae were sampled on day 7, 14, 28, and 56. The algae pigments were quantified via a fluoroprobe and diatoms were quantified with counts on slides. Finally, both 13s and 16s DNA sequencing was performed on all of the samples.