Description Urbanization and population growth over the past two hundred years in North America has caused multiple and cumulative changes in the natural environment in the form of pollution, habitat fragmentation, and destructive land use. These changes to the environment often affect surface water quality, impacting drinking water reserves, wildlife habitat, and industries such as commercial ...

The following four broad aims were addressed in this study. (1) To ascertain whether the characteristics of the benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages within the different nearshore marine habitat types identified by Valesini et al. (2003) on the lower west coast of Australia differ significantly, and whether the pattern of those spatial differences matches those among the environmental characte...