Ecosystem services of riparian areas: stream bank stability and avian habitat

Berges, Sara

doi:10.31274/etd-180810-1207

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…After pin installation, the bank area of each pin plot was measured. Methods reported here were similar to previously reported studies (Zaimes et al 2004(Zaimes et al , 2006(Zaimes et al , and 2008Berges 2009;Willett et al 2009;and Willett 2010).…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 64%

“…Eroding banks were identified based on the USDA NRCS (1998) criteria for severely and very severely eroded banks, which were developed for calculating erosion and sediment delivery based on visual inspection of streambanks. This approach has been used in previous streambank erosion studies (Zaimes et al 2006;Berges 2009;Willett et al 2009;and Willett 2010). Banks identified as severely to very severely eroding possessed one or more of the following characteristics: two-thirds of the bank face devoid of vegetative growth or roots; less than one-third of bank face protected by roots; overhanging vegetation with eroded undercut face; near vertical slope; and apparent bank failures, such as slumps and slides.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Streambank erosion in two watersheds of the Central Claypan Region of Missouri, United States

Willett¹,

Lerch²,

Schultz³

et al. 2012

Journal of Soil and Water Conservation

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This study was undertaken to assess the importance of streambank erosion to the total in-stream sediment of two agricultural watersheds within the Central Claypan Areas. The objective of this research was to determine the effect of stream order, adjacent land use, and season on streambank erosion rates. Thirty-four study sites were established in 2007 and 2008 within Crooked and Otter Creek watersheds, two claypan watersheds located in northeastern Missouri. At each site, field assessments of severely to very severely eroding bank length were determined along 300 to 400 m (984 to 1,312 ft) stream reaches. A factorial experimental design was implemented with four land uses (crop, forest, pasture, and riparian forest), three seasons, and three stream orders (1st, 2nd, and 3rd). Each treatment was replicated three times for each stream order, except for the cropped 3rd order treatment as only one suitable treatment site could be found. Streambank erosion was measured using erosion pins, which were installed in randomly assigned plots that included at least 20% of the eroded bank length within each site. The effect of different seasons was assessed by measuring the length of the exposed pins three times per year (March, July, and November). The bulk density and carbon and nitrogen content of bank material were also determined. Sediment loss rates showed that season and the three-way interaction between season, land use, and stream order were highly significant. Erosion rates were consistently higher in the winter months than spring/ summer and fall seasons; however, the significant three-way interaction precluded a simple interpretation of the seasonal effect. Soil nutrient concentration data showed that forest sites had significantly lower C and N concentrations than other land uses. At the watershed scale, bank sediment accounted for 79% to 96% of the total in-stream sediment and 21% to 24% of the total N exported from the study area. These results indicate that streambanks are the dominant source of sediment and a significant source of N in these streams. Therefore, improved management of riparian areas to decrease streambank erosion would result in significant water quality improvement in streams of the Central Claypan Areas in northeastern Missouri. (1996) reported that streambank erosion accounted for up to 80% of the in-stream sediment. Recent work utilizing stable isotopes has shown that streambank erosion can account for the majority of suspended sediment present in streams during high flow conditions (Wilson et al. 2008). In addition, streambank erosion is an important source of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) contamination in streams (DeWolfe et al. 2004;Zaimes et al. 2008). State and federal conservation agencies acknowledge both the impact of sediment and associated nutrients on aquatic habitats (Shields et al. 1994) and the implications of soil loss on agricultural productivity.Due to the runoff-prone nature of claypan soils, overland erosion from cropped fields has been widely assumed to b...

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 64%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Streambank erosion in two watersheds of the Central Claypan Region of Missouri, United States

Willett¹,

Lerch²,

Schultz³

et al. 2012

Journal of Soil and Water Conservation

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“…Accordingly, the implementation of such measures in place of using environmental flows addressing only fish requirements can provide significant positive ecological effects in downstream reaches (Lorenz et al, 2013;Pusey and Arthington, 2003) and additional ecosystem services like stream bank stability, flood risk reduction, or wildlife habitat (Berges, 2009;Blackwell and Maltby, 2006) while imposing minor revenue losses on dam managers (Rivaes et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Importance of considering riparian vegetation requirements for the long-term efficiency of environmental flows in aquatic microhabitats

Rivaes

Boavida

Santos

et al. 2017

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Environmental flows remain biased toward the traditional biological group of fish species. Consequently, these flows ignore the inter-annual flow variability that rules species with longer lifecycles and therefore disregard the long-term perspective of the riverine ecosystem. We analyzed the importance of considering riparian requirements for the long-term efficiency of environmental flows. For that analysis, we modeled the riparian vegetation development for a decade facing different environmental flows in two case studies. Next, we assessed the corresponding fish habitat availability of three common fish species in each of the resulting riparian landscape scenarios. Modeling results demonstrated that the environmental flows disregarding riparian vegetation requirements promoted riparian degradation, particularly vegetation encroachment. Such circumstance altered the hydraulic characteristics of the river channel where flow depths and velocities underwent local changes of up to 10 cm and 40 cm s −1 , respectively. Accordingly, after a decade of this flow regime, the available habitat area for the considered fish species experienced modifications of up to 110 % when compared to the natural habitat. In turn, environmental flows regarding riparian vegetation requirements were able to maintain riparian vegetation near natural standards, thereby preserving the hydraulic characteristics of the river channel and sustaining the fish habitat close to the natural condition. As a result, fish habitat availability never changed more than 17 % from the natural habitat.

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“…The landscape characteristics in riparian areas have significant impacts on the transport mechanisms of materials, sediments, nutrients, and pollutants loaded from the watersheds, and on the condition of stream environments [10][11][12][13]. Various types of riparian vegetation (e.g., riparian buffer, buffer strip, and vegetation strip) have been shown to have positive effects on both biological and nonbiological characteristics of streams, such as stabilizing stream banks [14][15][16], reducing nutrient and sediment loading from anthropogenic land uses from watersheds into streams [1,17,18], lowering stream water temperature by providing shade [19,20], providing habitats for aquatic and terrestrial organisms [21][22][23], enhancing ecological integrity and biodiversity [24,25], and mediating the negative impacts of land uses on streams in watersheds [10,26,27]. Given these various benefits, riparian vegetation has been widely used in many countries in accordance with guidelines or regulations in the U.S.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationships between Riparian Forest Fragmentation and Biological Indicators of Streams

et al. 2019

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Anthropogenic activities, such as land use and land cover modifications in riparian areas, can alter the degree of fragmentation of riparian vegetation, lead to the degradation of stream habitats, and affect biological communities in the streams. The characteristics of the riparian forests can modify the condition of stream environments and the transporting mechanisms of materials, sediments, nutrients, and pollutants loaded from the watersheds. This study aimed to examine the relationships between forest fragmentation and three biological indicators of trophic diatom, benthic macroinvertebrate, and the fish assessment in the Nakdong River, Korea. Eighty-nine biological assessment sampling sites in the National Aquatic Ecological Monitoring Program of South Korea were identified. For each sampling site, riparian forest data within a 500 m radius were extracted from national LULC using GIS to compute fragmentation metrics using FRAGSTATS software. Four fragmentation metrics—number of forest patches, percentage of riparian forest cover (PLAND), largest riparian forest patch index (LPI), and riparian forest division index (DIVISION)—were correlated with the biological indicators. Also, due to severe spatial autocorrelation among observations, the fragmentation metrics and stream environmental variables were regressed to biological indicators using regression tree analysis. Our results indicate that the biological indicators were significantly associated with most forest fragmentation metrics. We found positive correlations of PLAND and LPI with biological indicators, whereas DIVISION was negatively correlated with biological indicators. Both correlation and regression tree analyses revealed that the biological conditions of streams were likely to be better if riparian forests are less fragmented. Particularly, stronger relationships were revealed between macroinvertebrates and fish with the fragmentation metrics of riparian forests than with benthic diatoms. However, these relationships varied with elevation, stream size, and slope conditions. The results of this study reinforced the importance of including riparian forests in the planning, restoration, and management of stream environments. These results also suggested that planners and managers may need to consider different strategies for different stream environments and topographic characteristics in managing riparian forests.

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Ecosystem services of riparian areas: stream bank stability and avian habitat

Abstract: compositional diversity of the buffer vegetation. These results emphasize the importance of matching buffer design and management to species requirements if the objectives are to attract specific target species or species groups.

Cited by 5 publications

References 77 publications

Streambank erosion in two watersheds of the Central Claypan Region of Missouri, United States

Streambank erosion in two watersheds of the Central Claypan Region of Missouri, United States

Importance of considering riparian vegetation requirements for the long-term efficiency of environmental flows in aquatic microhabitats

Relationships between Riparian Forest Fragmentation and Biological Indicators of Streams

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