Effects of river bed regulation on habitats and communities: A case study for ostracods in the Oder River, Poland

Abstract

The effects of damming, groyne building, and channelizing on habitats and ostracod assemblages in the Oder River, one of the six largest European river systems, were analyzed. Regulation works had been conducted on the river from the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century. Main objectives of the study were to detect the effect of river bed regulation on attributes of habitats and ostracod communities. The values of nitrogen were the highest in the dammed stretch and the lowest in the channelized one. As for conductivity, TDS (total dissolved solids) and salinity were the highest in the groyned stretch. Hardness had the highest values in the channelized and groyned stretches. The lowest visibility was noted in the dammed stretched. The stretch influenced by damming was dominated by habitats with a considerable proportion of detritus in sediments. In the stretch influenced by groynes, the proportions of habitats with mineral and organic substrates were similar and the proportion of habitats covered with vegetation was the highest. Habitats with rocky, sandy bottoms dominated in the channelized stretch and nearly half of the habitats were covered with vegetation. The highest ostracod density characterized the groyned stretch (658 ind · m−2), was moderate in the case of the dammed stretch (290 ind · m−2) and the lowest in the channelized one (107 ind · m−2). Bradleystrandesia reticulata, Candona neglecta, and Limnocythere inopinata dominated in the groyned and channelized stretches. Cypridopsis vidua, Darwinula stevensoni, and Pseudocandona compressa dominated in the dammed stretch. The type of river bed regulation significantly differentiated both habitats and ostracod assemblages. Differences among ostracod assemblages were related to particular species, but also regarding density and evenness. The degree of vegetation coverage and detritus content in the sediments were strong predictors for ostracod community composition.

Habitat factors differentiating the occurrence of Ostracoda (Crustacea) in the floodplain of a small lowland River Krąpiel (N-W Poland)

“…Habitat type is one of the most important environmental parameters affecting ostracod assemblages (Marmonier et al, 1994;Külköylüo glu, 2004;Nagorskaya and Keyser, 2005;Szlauer-Łukaszewska, 2015a), something that our research has also proved. Habitat type in river valleys is associated with the specific location in the river valley and connectivity with the main river channel.…”

“…more organic matter in the sediments than in typical lotic habitats (e.g. Szlauer-Łukaszewska, 2013Szlauer-Łukaszewska, , 2015aSzlauer-Łukaszewska, , 2015b. There have been very few studies on the distribution of ostracods along the whole length of a river valley, from the headwaters to the mouth of the river.…”

“…There have been very few studies on the distribution of ostracods along the whole length of a river valley, from the headwaters to the mouth of the river. Those studies known from the literature are limited to selected stretches of a particular river or valley (Scharf, 1988;Marmonier and Creuzé des Châtelliers, 1992;Creuzé des Châtelliers and Marmonier, 1993;Mezquita et al, 1999aMezquita et al, , 1999bNagorskaya and de Jonge, 2002;Nagorskaya and Keyser, 2005;Kiss, 2006;Kiss and Schöll, 2009;Higuti et al, 2009Higuti et al, , 2010Scharf and Brunke, 2013;Szlauer-Łukaszewska, 2013Szlauer-Łukaszewska, , 2015aSzlauer-Łukaszewska, , 2015b. A very few studies have considered the other habitats of the river valley outside the main river channel: these include oxbow lakes (Scharf, 1988) or oxbow lakes and backwater canals (Kiss, 2006;Kiss and Schöll, 2009;Nagorskaya and de Jonge, 2002;Higuti et al, 2009Higuti et al, , 2010.…”

Sedimentary-vegetation response to the channel by-pass: A case study of the Danube river

“…Flood protection embankments were reconstructed several times to its current stage with various channel modifications that are built to accelerate waterways transportation (Jansky et al, 2004). one of these modifications was named groynes (Szlauer-Lukaszewska, 2015;klasz et al, 2014). They are hydrotechnical adjustments to the channel curves to deepen the water traffic trajectory.…”

Life stages and morphological variations of Limnocythere inopinata (Crustacea, Ostracoda) from Lake Jiang-Co (northern Tibet): a bioculture experiment

“…Living populations of L. inopinata have been reported from Europe, Asia, and Africa. The European populations include: Austria ( Löffler 1990 ; Yin et al 1999 ; Rossi et al 2010 ), Germany ( von Grafenstein et al 1999 ; Frenzel et al 2010 ; Scharf et al 2013), Greece ( Frogley et al 2001 ), Iceland ( Alkalaj et al 2019 ), Italy ( Rossi et al 2010 ; Marta et al 2017), Poland ( Szlauer-Łukaszewska 2014 , 2015a , b ), Spain ( Mezquita et al 1999 ; Rodríguez-Pérez and Baltanás 2008 ; Martínez-García et al 2015 ), Sweden ( Iglikowska and Namiotko 2012 ), Switzerland ( Decrouy et al 2012 , 2014), Turkey ( Külköylüoğlu et al 2016 ; McCormack et al 2019 ), and United Kingdom ( Benzie 1989 ; Holmes et al 2010 ). The Asian populations were recorded from China ( Mischke et al 2003 ; Zhang et al 2015 ; Akita et al 2016 ), India ( Kramer et al 2014 ), Israel ( Mischke et al 2012 ), and Jordan ( Mischke et al 2012 ).…”