Assessing Spatial Distribution of Benthic Macroinvertebrate Communities Associated with Surrounding Land Cover and Water Quality  
[PERSON]  
1 Fisheries Science Institute, Chonnam National University, Yeosu 59626, Korea; [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (D.-K.K.); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (H.J.); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (K.P.)  
[PERSON]  
1 Fisheries Science Institute, Chonnam National University, Yeosu 59626, Korea; [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (D.-K.K.); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (H.J.); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (K.P.)  
Daejeon 34045, Korea  
riverine ecosystems. Besides, the high sensitivity of species in their composition and assemblage to changes of ambient habitat conditions allows benthic macroinvertebrates to be used for assessing the stream health and integrity of fluvial ecosystems [8; 9]. From an ecological perspective related to niche partitioning, monitoring the distribution of aquatic macroinvertebrates has been linked to ambient physicochemical constraints (e.g., ecosystem morphology and trophic status) [10; 11]. Hence, the role of benthic invertebrates has been gradually emphasized as bioindicators [12].  
Stream health based on benthic communities can be spatially heterogeneous according to ambient environmental factors, such as neighboring land use/cover, various pollutants, hydrological factors, and local climates. Particularly, land use/cover is a critical factor to drive the transport of sediments and nutrients related to stream water quality [13; 14]. Given the recently advanced satellite technology, easily obtainable/accessible data to land-use information are highly cost-efficient relative to field-based water quality measurement [14; 15]. Since the fate and transport of nutrients (e.g., nitrogen and phosphorus) are also closely associated with land use in watersheds, benthic communities can be correlated with surrounding land-use patterns [16; 17]. Therefore, we hypothesize that land-use information from online websites can enable the rapid assessment of benthic communities in the context of ecosystem health.  
Despite the assessment efficiency of land-use information, its slow changes can be still limited to explicitly account for the temporal dynamics of the target biota of our interest within a short term. In stream ecosystems, benthic macroinvertebrates vary in their composition as well as abundance within the same survey area over time. Particularly in East Asian countries including Korea, eastern China, and Japan, monsoon events along with multiple typhoons recur in summer [18; 19]. Despite the short time span between surveys, this local climatological feature can change water quality quickly. Therefore, we infer that there are huge potentials in benthic macroinvertebrate community change within a short term, assuming that ambient water quality can be a supplementary indicator to characterize the benthic macroinvertebrate community in a temporal scale.  
Our study aims to project the distributions of benthic macroinvertebrate communities associated with the surrounding land use/cover and water quality in Seomijn River, South Korea. We also analyze and evaluate the sensitivities of benthic communities in different taxonomical levels (e.g., order, genus, and species). Furthermore, to assess the status of stream health and integrity in the Seomijn River, we evaluated the values of biotic indices from the collected benthic macroinvertebrate data. Finally, we anticipate finding out more useful data information to effectively characterize the distribution of benthic macroinvertebrates in the context of the rapid assessment of stream health.